


Cast Iron

by RubraSaetaFictor



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, District 12 (Hunger Games), F/M, Missing Scene, POV Katniss Everdeen, Post-Book 3: Mockingjay, Pre-Epilogue Mockingjay, Slow Burn, growing together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26127682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubraSaetaFictor/pseuds/RubraSaetaFictor
Summary: In the aftermath of war, Katniss Everdeen and District Twelve figure out how to put themselves back together and learn it’s not a job to be done alone.CW: for canon-typical discussion of suicidal ideation, depression, PTSD, and child abuse, plus occasional coarse language.Story is canon-compliant to the novels, but is influenced by the films.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 96
Kudos: 126





	1. March

I watch the embers in the kitchen hearth with half-focused eyes. They flicker red with less consistency than they did an hour, two hours ago.

 _They’re dying,_ some distant part of my brain tells me. _You should add more fuel to the fire._

I have no fuel left.

Not for the fire of course. I have plenty of fuel for that. I’m still rich, after all.

I may be confined to what’s left of my hometown and been publicly declared mentally deranged, but one thing the new Capitol has kept of the old Capitol is the payments to the Victors. Whether to honor our winning, to compensate for our suffering, or to keep us quiet I don’t know, or don’t care.

I estimate my fire has 15 minutes or less left to burn. That’s the thing with fires. Even the biggest flames eventually consume all their fuel and burn out.

There’s still one fire still burning. The firebombs that destroyed District Twelve set the Seam on fire. Months later, it’s still burning, deep down in the earth. I remember someone telling me that I couldn’t wear rubber-soled shoes outside the Victor’s Village because the ground was too hot. The rubble blocked most of the mine entrances, but there’s just enough air to keep it going. The first people that came back quickly realized that there would be no rebuilding at all unless they covered the remaining holes and snuffed out what was left. It’s only a matter of time before that fire dies out too.

District Twelve will never be able to mine coal again. The thing that defined us for so long is gone.

Prim, gone. Peeta, a shell. Twelve in ashes. What did the Girl on Fire ever do but burn everything she touched? They should cover me with rubble, cut off the oxygen and let me die.

There’s one, maybe two sparks left in the stove.

Am I cold? Am I hot? Do I even need a fire? I think I recall someone saying that it’s spring.

I feel nothing but heavy.

My lids close and for a moment I can still see the flickers of light as white spots against the blackness.

\----

When I open my eyes, the fire is alive again, robust and crackling. There’s a warm smell that fills the air. Somewhere, it feels far away, I hear music, humming. I lift my head and turn toward my left shoulder and the sound. I see Greasy Sae’s granddaughter playing with a ball of yarn, humming to herself in her own little world, one that probably hasn’t changed much today from yesterday or a year ago.

I’m almost jealous of her, but I’m distracted by another sound, a scratching, scraping sound. I look down at my arm, certain it’s my own nails scraping at the grafts of red skin on my forearms that still don’t feel like, and never will quite be, mine. But I’m wearing long sleeves and my hands are still in my lap.

I let the weight of my head roll toward my right shoulder and see Sae in the kitchen with a large gray pot.

I make my eyes focus and realize she’s scrubbing it with something grainy, like sand or, more likely, salt. The sound becomes clearer. I don’t like it. It makes me itch.

“What are you doing?”

I can’t think of the last time I used my voice. It sounds as scratchy as salt on metal. “I have pans.”

“Those bits of tin from the Capitol?” Sae doesn’t stop scrubbing as she laughs. “They’re shiny enough I suppose, but if all I had was a pot to piss in, let’s just say that’s not the pot I’d choose.”

“A pot’s a pot.” I’m fully awake now and the sound is more irritating.

“That’s how I know you’re not a cook.” Sae puts the pot down and rubs her hands down the front of her dress. She grabs a bowl and ladles something into it from the shiny pot on the burner. She drags a chair from the kitchen table over next to me and raises a spoon to my lips. “How’s that?”

I sip down the broth. It’s warm and thin and salty, but whether my taste buds have given up caring or it’s the soup, it tastes like nothing. I shrug.

“It’s shit, ain’t it?” Sae laughs. “I can make wild dog taste like beef, but I can’t make a decent meal with butcher meat in a pot like that. Scalds something awful. Give me good cast iron any day.” She spoons another mouthful between my lips.

I swallow and take the spoon from her hand. Sae places the bowl in my lap. “It may be shit, but you’ve still got to eat the whole bowl.” I nod and begin to feed myself.

Content that I’m eating, Sae disappears from my peripheral vision momentarily before reappearing in with the gray pot and a towel. She places the towel in her lap and settles the pot between her legs as she begins to scrub again. The sound is worse up close.

“Thom and the boys pulled this out from one of the houses. Capitol dropped a bomb on it and barely a dent. _That’s_ a pot that can simmer a stew.” She slaps her hand on the side of the pot before resuming her scrubbing.

I try to work up the energy to glare at her, but Sae isn’t paying attention to me. That’s when I notice that the pot isn’t gray at all. That beneath the coat of ashes, it’s 90 percent rust.

“It’s rusted.” I croak, hoping it’ll stop her scratchy scrubbing.

“Didn’t your mother teach you about cast iron?” Sae laughs again. It’s more grating than the scrubbing. I must have worked up a glare, because she stops herself. “No, no I suppose she didn’t. Cast iron doesn’t mind a little bit of rust. Give it a good scrubbing, work it back down to the metal, rub in some oil – this pot’ll be as good as new.” Sae tilts the inside of the pot toward me to show the spot she’d been scrubbing. There’s a spot, about an inch and a half wide, where the salt has cut through the ash and rust where you can see clean, dull grey metal. A phrase from another lifetime clicks in my head as Sae resumes her scrubbing.

“Beauty base zero.” I mumble.

“What’s that, hon?” She stops the scraping sound to listen, which is enough encouragement to keep me talking.

“In the Capitol, before the Games. They rub off all your scars and callouses. Give you skin like a new baby.”

I look down at my hands holding the bowl, the grafts of skin visible on the backs and at my wrists, even my prep team couldn’t scrub these marks away now. Some scars just go too deep.

We sit silently for a moment. The only sound is Sae’s granddaughter, still humming along.

“Well,” Sae says with a smile, “lucky for us they couldn’t scrub away your fire.”

Couldn’t they, I wonder? I don’t feel like I have any fire left.

My head suddenly feels too heavy to hold up any more, and I let my chin drift down to rest on my chest.

“Finish up your soup,” Sae says gently. She stands up and holds the pot against her chest. “Give it some time and it’ll get better, I promise.”

She disappears behind me again and I empty the bowl, spoonful by slow spoonful. She might still be scrubbing, but nothing makes the trip from my ears to my brain until the spoon clatters against the side of the empty bowl. I set the bowl down on the empty chair next to me and when Sae picks it up, she’s in her coat with her granddaughter at her side.

“That’s a good girl.” Sae says as sets the empty bowl in the sink. “See you in the morning, Katniss.”

I say nothing as my eyes drift back to the fire, the flames dancing in slow ribbons of orange and white and yellow.


	2. March

In the moments I allow myself to feel anything at all, I feel a hint of sympathy for my mother.

The emptiness and fog in my mind, the leaden weight of my body. The desire for it just to end, but the weariness makes it hard to move, let alone to kill yourself. This is what she must have felt when my father died.

My mind floats just outside my body and I see myself, a shell of a person in a chair, unseeing, unfeeling, looking more like my mother than I ever thought possible with my grey Seam eyes and dark hair.

I hope for accidents. That I slide out of the rocker in my sleep and knock my skull against a corner of the hearth, bleeding out before Greasy Sae comes to make breakfast. Head wounds are good at bleeding, it wouldn’t take too long. Sae would have to clean up the mess in front of her granddaughter, but I doubt the girl would remember. In any case, she’s probably seen worse by now.

Prim is dead and my mother is never coming home. The war is over. No one needs me or the Mockingjay anymore. Who would really miss me if I was gone? Didn’t they dump me here in Twelve, just another shovelful to toss on the slag heap?

The phone rings nine times in a row and then stops. Sometime later it happens again. After the third try, the caller gives up.

It must be near evening, because my fire is starting to die again, which means that Greasy Sae will be coming by soon to make me dinner. I wish she wouldn’t. At least it’d save me from that awful scratching sound that happens every time she goes back to work on that damn pot. There’s something about that sound that I can feel in my bones. They could sell that sound to Capitol for torture. At least the old one. I don’t know if the people running the Capitol now are into that kind of thing. Coin probably would have been, but at least she’s gone. I’m not certain about much of anything, but I think I got that one right. She would have been as bad, maybe even worse, than Snow.

I think again about the sound of salt crystals on metal and I shudder. Maybe it’s Sae’s way of getting me to eat faster. I wish she’d just leave me to starve in peace.

My stomach grumbles and seems to disagree. I find the energy to punch it as I drag my mother’s shawl tighter around me.

\----

Greasy Sae arrives right on time with her stupid pot in one hand and some papers in the other. “More letters, Katniss.” she says as she drops two envelopes on top of the sloping pile on the mantel. I can’t see the writing on them unless I stand up and I can’t see how it’d be worth the bother.

I watch Sae as she rebuilds the fire and ignore her as she clangs at the stove behind me. What would she do if I refused to eat? Try to force me? Get Haymitch? The odds wouldn’t be in her favor there. I doubt he can stand up right now, let alone walk over here.

I run my tongue over my fuzzy-feeling teeth. I should have had them filed into points like Enobara, so I could bite anyone who tried to feed me. Like a nasty old cat. I’m almost amused by the idea, until I think of Buttercup.

Buttercup, that Prim loved so much. That loved her back, at least as much as a cat can love. I wonder if he’s still stalking around Thirteen, waiting for her to come back.

“Stupid cat.” I mutter under my breath.

“What’s that, hon?” Greasy Sae asks from near the stove.

I shake my head. “Nothing.” I try to think of anything but cats and the people who loved them.

“Supper’s almost ready. Cooked it earlier, just warming it up a bit.”

A few minutes later, she brings me a deep plate.

The bottom of the plate is heaped with mashed potatoes and on top sits a pile of beef in a thick sauce, surrounded by carrots and onions. It smells good, Capitol-food good.

My plan to starve myself can wait a day.

The meat falls apart on my fork and I’m torn between savoring and stuffing my face. The latter wins.

“They wasted you in Thirteen,” I say. “I guess that’s the power of a Victor’s budget.”

Sae sits down next to me and laughs. “It’s wild dog. They found one tangled up in the old fence, shot it and brought it to me.” She points to my near-empty plate. “That’s the power of a long cook and a good pot.”

I notice for the first time in five days that Greasy Sae doesn’t have the pot in her lap to scrub.

“You finished it?”

“Better than new. Like I said, cast iron might’n be pretty, but it’s tough as nails. Give it a little care, it’ll come right back.”

I clean off the rest of the food on my plate. “I guess it was worth the scrubbing.”

“Well, I don’t have time to stew something for six hours every day, so don’t go expecting it. But I had to prove a point.” Sae’s fingers rest against my hand slightly as she takes back the plate. “It’s good to see you eat with an appetite though. There’s more on the stove if you want it.”

I shake my head, full for the first time since -- when, I can’t remember. Before the attack on the Capitol? Before Thirteen? Before the Quell?

It’s too much to think of and suddenly my stomach feels like lead. Any joy I had in the meal is gone.

If Sae notices the change, she doesn’t let on. “It’ll keep. And the pot can stay here. I’m getting old and it’s too heavy to lug back and forth. Besides, I’ve got others to work on at home. Plenty to do to bring this place right again.”

We don’t exchange another word that evening, but the whether it’s the pot or the proof that I still have an appetite, Sae’s culinary range is suddenly expanded over the next few days. Watery oatmeal is replaced with eggs and bacon, full meals replace thin soups. It is easier to eat, but the moments between the meals are just as gray and unchanging.

Except for one thing.

The days must be getting warmer, because Sae lets the kitchen hearth go dark during the day and only builds a fire after supper. I’m not cold, but I have less to stare at during the day.

Sae must sense my growing restlessness, because as she cleans up breakfast, she suggests I go out.

“Spring’s in the air today. You ought to get out,” she says. “Go hunting.”

Hunting? Yes, I was a hunter once. Of turkeys and squirrels and children and presidents. Another lifetime ago. Now I sit and stare. “I don’t have a bow,” I object weakly.

“Check down the hall,” Sae encourages.

I don’t. At least not then.

Later, when I have to get up to pee, I figure I’m up anyway and find the bows in the study. Since there’s no fire to look at in the kitchen, I shift to the living room sofa and stare at the wallpaper instead.

That night, I dream of ashes and shovels.

In the morning, I discover Peeta has come home.

And suddenly, I’m not made of lead anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Want a soundtrack for reading? Check out the “Southern Gothic” playlist on Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX58NJL8iVBGW?si=AeKpkTv9QBOl1XBPtdQ3HQ


	3. March

My burst of energy at Peeta’s arrival is short lived. The exertion of cleansing myself and my room, the trip to the woods, nursing Buttercup, and calling my mother – it was too much. I did more in 24 hours than I have in three months and now I have nothing left. It’s all I can do this morning to get myself from the chair by the hearth to the knock at the door.

_Sae must have forgotten her key,_ I think. But as I open the door, I grasp the real reason for the knock - the boy with the bread standing next to her.

I don’t remember Peeta ever knocking before.

After the Tour, when we were training for the Quarter Quell, he would walk in and out like family. Then again, I used to not the lock the door. Another thing the war has taken away from me.

I let Sae and Peeta and his bread in and sit myself at the kitchen table without a word.

He may not let himself in anymore, but Peeta still knows his way around my kitchen. I assume it’s the same layout as his. He takes no time finding a knife and board, cutting me a slice, and sliding it to me on a plate.

The bread is warm and slathered in a thick layer of butter, topped with salt. How early must he have gotten up to bake it?

I look at Peeta across the table. His eyes meet mine and he gives me a small smile.

He is thin and burn scars creep up his neck, but his eyes are clear, that brilliant merchant blue. I’m washed and in clean clothing, but I still feel a mess. How is it that Peeta -- who has gone through even more than me -- how is it that he is all right and I’m not?

I need to look at anything but Peeta. My eyes flick over to Sae at the stove.

_That’s it_ , I think, _Peeta is cast iron._ Abused and neglected and brought back like new. I’m just Capitol tin, all flash and sparkle and good for almost nothing.

Peeta is home for less than a day, and he plants me primroses and brings me bread. All this while I’ve done nothing at all. I even more or less ran away the moment I saw him. A wave of shame rushes over me. I keep my chin down and let Peeta and Sae do the talking. If they direct any words to me, I don’t notice or pretend not to.

Buttercup mews at my heel and I slip him a slice of bacon, just to give something to someone. I feed him the rest of my bacon throughout the meal, vaguely aware that I’ll likely have to clean up cat puke later and hoping that he’ll show some gratitude by doing it outside. Not likely though. He’d probably puke on my pillow just to spite me. Then again, I’m all he’s got now.

After breakfast, Peeta helps Sae pick up the dishes and politely excuses himself to go visit Haymitch. I haven’t seen Haymitch since we returned to Twelve together, but I’ve taken all the human interaction I can handle today and anyway, Peeta doesn’t invite me along. I imagine he has a few things he’d like to say to Haymitch on his own. I wonder if I should take stock of my mother’s collection of herbs and salves in case anyone comes back with a broken fist or a black eye, before I remember that I took most of them to Thirteen. Most of my other things had been returned, but my mother must have taken them with her.

After Sae leaves, I check the cabinets to see what of my mother’s remedies were left behind. I find a few things that had been too big to pack quickly – a jar of tallow shrub berries, some dried milkweed, thistle, wormseed. I guess I’m all set if anyone needs to vomit or has worms. I cast a glance at Buttercup and make a note to add some wormseed to his next meal.

I try to figure out what’s missing. No burdock, which we always used up for fast for burns. No sedatives, nothing for wounds, fever, or pain.

I start to make a list in my head - burdock, feverbush, cranesbill? My head is too fuzzy to remember any more. I recall seeing my family’s plant guide with the other things they brought back from Thirteen in the study and decide that will help.

I stand at the doorway of the study, deciding whether to enter. Ever since Snow sat behind the desk, I’ve avoided the room as much as possible. I know Snow is dead, they told me as much, but even if I burned the last rose in the house, his presence hangs over this space. I hear Buttercup hiss at my heels, and I feel glad for his presence.

He enters the room before I do and leaps up on the desk. I decide it’s safe as he noses the pile of items they delivered from Thirteen. I wonder if he can smell Prim on my things. I pick up the plant guide to my nose and smell nothing but old paper. Buttercup must not smell anything either, as he turns his back on the desk and leaps down to the chair, claiming the cushion as his own.

I run my thumb along the edges of the book and let it fall open in my hands. It lands on one of the more recent pages, one Peeta had illustrated for me. I had added so much to the book, but it doesn’t feel like it should be mine. I suppose my mother doesn’t need it anymore, she would have memorized all she needed to know through years of practice, but it should be Prim’s – she was just starting to learn.

Looking back at the pile, I pick up Peeta’s locket and open it, snapping off the half with Gale’s face without looking, and carry the rest of the token and the book out of the room. As I leave, I hear the richness of the bacon catching up with Buttercup. A smile comes across my face as I hear him coughing up the contents of his stomach on the chair. _Good boy,_ I think. That’s one piece of furniture I don’t have to be frightened of anymore.

I sit on the sofa and open the book to the first page – _Alder bark, chewed bark is used to treat wounds and ulcers. Harvest Early spring._ I tear out a page from the back of book, scrounge up a pencil and start to make a list. I get five items on my harvest list, before I stop myself.

Why am I doing this? I’m no healer. That was my mother and Prim. I look down at the locket still in my hand. I’m the one who left a wake of destruction in my path for them to patch back up. They shared a gift. Ours was always the door they brought the sick to, because of Mom, because of Prim. Neither of them will ever be coming back. There isn’t anyone left to help when someone knocks on the door. No doctor would want to live here now, so Twelve is just out of luck. And so am I.

I draw the book and locket to my chest. I cry until I’m too tired to cry anymore and sleep takes me, a sleep too heavy for even nightmares to push through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> USDA Forest Service guide to the medicinal plants of Appalachia: https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/rp/rp_ne138.pdf


	4. April

Life begins to take on something of a routine.

Peeta and Sae show up together with breakfast. He slices fresh bread, while she makes us a meal. They chat with each other, while I mostly say nothing. Haymitch has yet to appear. Peeta helps Sae clean and everyone leaves after breakfast. I don’t see anyone until Sae returns with her granddaughter to make supper.

Seeing how well Peeta looks and considering the warning he gave me on his return, I decide to answer the phone when Dr. Aurelius calls.

“Hello, Katniss. Do you feel ready to talk today?”

“I… I think so.” I reply. I’m still not sure about this, but his testimony at the trial probably saved my life, so I owe him one.

“How are you feeling right now?” he asks.

“Heavy. Empty.” I reply.

“Then I’m glad you answered the phone,” he begins. He sounds kinder than I remember.

We discuss my daily “routine” and he tells me I have to do one task a day. It can be as small as I want, but I have to do one. I’ll need to report on it to him daily.

The first day, I push the study chair outside and set it on fire. I watch for two hours as the upholstery curls and the chair slowly burns to cinders. Afterward, I take a three-hour nap. Another day, I wash my hair and try to braid it fancy like my mother did. I cry when I can’t remember the way her hands did it and then ruin what I did manage to plait by falling asleep on the sofa. I feed Buttercup scraps and wormseed and he keeps me company on the days where I go back to bed after breakfast and don’t get up until dinner. I continue to review the plant book and add items to my list. I’d like to start harvesting, before peak season passes on the early spring plants, but after my last trip out, I’m uneasy about leaving the house.

A week goes by. I tell Dr. Aurelius about how I used to go hunting and I confess my failure to even make it to the hunting grounds. He encourages me to start small and rebuild my stamina.

The day is warm, so I walk a loop around the Victor’s Village and realize that more people have returned than I expected. I nod at faces that poke out of windows or from porches, but I don’t have it in me to say hello. There appears to be dozens of people living in each of the unclaimed Victor’s mansions. As far as I know, no one has asked about my house, or Peeta’s or Haymitch’s, where each of us lives alone. Maybe they think we earned it. Or maybe they don’t want to be anywhere near us. I look down to the gravel as my desire to not meet anyone’s eyes grows.

I spot a patch of plantain on the no longer well-maintained Village green and pull up a plant before I realize I don’t know what to do with it. I put the plant in a jar of water when I get home and pull out the plant guide to learn that they are good for snakebite and wounds. I go back out and harvest more. _I couldn’t hurt to have some on hand_ , I think _, in case someone comes to the door_.

As I come back with a dozen plants, I realized I haven’t watered the primroses since they were planted. I go inside and come back out with a bucket to only realize it’s already been done. The plants are not only well-watered, but weeded and happy and established. Someone has been caring for them in my stead and I know the only person it could be.

Peeta.

I’m struck again by the thoughtfulness of this gift and the need to pay him back for it somehow. But with what? All I’m good for is hunting, if I could even make it to the woods, and Peeta can buy any meat he wants. Unless of course he likes squirrel, like his father did. Does Peeta like squirrel?

I realize there’s still so much about him I don’t know, even before the Capitol may have changed him forever.

I spend the afternoon trying to think of a gift for Peeta, something he’d like, but doesn’t already have. By the time Greasy Sae comes to make my dinner, I have an idea.

“Sae,” I ask, almost as soon as she gets in the door. “Did they find any more of that cast iron?”

“Convinced you of the difference, did I?” Sae smiles. “I may have a few other pieces in need of some care. Want a skillet now?”

“No. I’m hoping to find another deep pot – one with a lid.”

“Well, finding a lid won’t be simple. They’re easier to lose or crack.”

“I just – I remember my mother using it to make bread and the lid, I remember the lid was important.” I’ve never been good at lying.

Greasy Sae nods her head. “So it is. Maybe we’ll make a cook of you yet. I’ll see what we can scrounge up.”

“And don’t clean it. I want to do it myself.”

Sae laughs. “In that case, want to help some with dinner? I’ve got carrots that could use some chopping.”

I’ve already done my one task for the day, but today I think I can handle another.

\---

It takes over a week before Greasy Sae comes to dinner with a large cast iron pot with a lid. The wire handle on the base is gone and the whole thing is covered in ash and rust, but the pot and the lid are both sound. My arms can barely hold the weight of it, they’ve gotten so weak. I need to hug the pot to my chest to get it to the counter. If I have to scrub as hard as Sae did on the last one, this will be a good opportunity to strengthen myself up.

“Get yourself a damp rag and a good handful of salt,” Sae tells me. “Scrub until the you can see bare metal. You’ll probably want a rag for your lap too. It can be dirty work.”

I sit by the hearth and start on the pot as soon as she leaves and get worn out after ten minutes. Still, I am excited about something for the first time in a long time. I slide the pot under my chair and promise it that I’ll do more work later.

It must have been a day for unearthing damaged things, because the next morning Peeta arrives with Haymitch in tow, along with his usual loaf of bread.

“Morning, Haymitch.” He looks rough and I derive a not-small amount of pleasure in the fact that I am no longer the sorriest-looking person in District Twelve. “To what do I owe the pleasure?

Haymitch plops down at the table with a grunt.

Peeta, who is apparently still good at verbally covering for others, replies in his stead. “Liquor ran out and there won’t be any more until the next supply train comes next month.” He offers Haymitch a warm slice of bread.

Haymitch grabs the slice and rips off a corner with his teeth. “I don’t understand why nobody here has bothered to make any.”

Peeta continues to slice the bread in straight, even slices. “I think they have better things to occupy their time.”

“Like what?” Haymitch mutters.

“Like rebuilding the District?” Peeta replies. “Not everyone has the luxury of wallowing around all day.” Peeta catches himself and his eyes flash up to meet mine, an apology already on his lips. “Not that- grieving isn’t – Sorry.” His chin falls to his chest as he feverishly finishes slicing the loaf. My situation has put even Peeta at a loss for words. I feel the need to keep an awkward silence from falling.

“No, you’re right, Peeta.” I say, taking the percolator from Sae and pouring three cups of coffee. “Haymitch and I need to find some hobbies. Something other than pretending to design clothes that is.”

Peeta is still apologetic. “I didn’t mean -- You hunt.”

“I haven’t been able to do much of that lately, but don’t worry about me, I’ve got something I’m working on.”

Haymitch raises an eyebrow to me. “Such as?”

“It’s a secret.” A warm little secret, just for me for now, and it makes me smile to think of my little pot under the chair. I slide Haymitch his cup.

Haymitch takes a swig. “We all know you’re terrible with secrets, sweetheart. That’s why no one ever told you anything.”

This cuts too close to the bone. I forgot how mean Haymitch can be when he’s sobering up. My jaw tightens as I reply. I can still be mean too. “Some of us are capable of change, Haymitch. So, about that hobby, what _was_ your talent for your Victory Tour? I don’t think you ever said.”

“Writing poetry.”

Peeta nearly chokes on his bread.

“Really?” I ask.

“You think you’re the first person they had fake a talent?” Haymitch replies. “The District Twelve escort wrote mine and I think they told her to make them awful on purpose to humiliate me. At least I hope they told her that, because they were very, very bad.”

A vision of a young Haymitch reading some Capitol women’s lousy poetry appears in my mind and a laugh escapes my lips. It feels unfamiliar, but good. At the same time, I’m almost mad that Haymitch makes it so hard to stay mad at him.

Peeta is still laughing. “I don’t suppose you’d want to give it a try for real?”

“No.”

“Well, what is something you’re good at?” I ask.

“Drinking.”

“Doesn’t count.” Peeta interjects.

“Well, I kept you two alive. It ain’t painting, but I like to think it counts for something.”

I think for a moment, when it comes to me. “So, what you’re saying is that you’re good at managing unruly creatures?”

Haymitch’s eyes widen momentarily then fall back down to slits. “I don’t like where this is headed. And I don’t need a hobby. I managed just fine for twenty-three years before you two showed up and I’ll be just fine now.”

“I guess that depends on your definition of ‘fine,’” I say.

“You do whatever you want, Haymitch,” Peeta says, sweetly. “I’m sure you’ll be fine until the next train comes in two and half weeks.”

The length of time settles on Haymitch and he sighs, “God, I miss Ripper.”

I hadn’t thought about Ripper, but I realize I never saw her in Thirteen. She must not have made it out. My eyes drift unconsciously to the direction of where the Hob used to be. She must be out there under the rubble somewhere, her body one of the thousands in District Twelve waiting to be recovered and put in a mass grave. Whatever levity or sense of normalcy I had felt this morning is gone.

Greasy Sae puts a plate of sausage and fried potatoes in front of me and it’s about all I can do to push them around the plate. I can feel that my body wants to cry. But I don’t want to, not in front of Haymitch. Not in front of Peeta. I decide each cube of potato needs my undivided attention.

My mood is contagious, and no one talks much for the rest of meal. As usual, Peeta helps Sae wash the dishes. After he wipes his hands dry on a towel and thanks Sae for the food, he heads for the door.

“You coming, Haymitch?”

Haymitch looks at me and then Peeta. “Suppose I should.” He pushes his chair out from the table and walks out through door Peeta holds open for him. Sae follows Haymitch out.

Peeta tries to catch my eye, but I’m too interested in using my fork to turn a small square of potato into mush. “Have a good day, Katniss. See you tomorrow.”

The door clicks behind him. I give them time to walk out of earshot before I slide my plate across the table and lay my head down in the empty spot left behind to cry for Ripper and Darius and all my other friends from the Hob.

Despite my hopes that this morning might be something different than the ones that came before, I know today is going to be a bad one. My promise to the pot will have to wait another day. 


	5. April

There are two more bad days before I can work on the pot again. The first day, I stay in my chair by the hearth for breakfast and don’t say a word until Dr. Aurelius calls. I cry to him about Ripper and the Hob and then fall asleep on the sofa until dinner. The second, I don’t even leave bed for breakfast. Greasy Sae brings me a cup of tea and a plate with two peeled hardboiled eggs and slice of toasted bread that is full of grains and could only have been made by Peeta. I eat none of it. When Sae finds me still in bed at dinnertime, with an untouched plate beside me, she checks my temperature. When she finds none, she walks me down the stairs for dinner and watches me eat every mouthful.

The next day, I drag myself out of bed, having been threatened with forcible removable if I’m not at the table by 8 AM. I find Haymitch and Peeta already seated at the table, deep in conversation and their plates mostly empty. I sit down at the table and see a basket of cheese buns in the center. My favorite.

I wonder if they are prompted by my absence the previous day. Sae might even have told Peeta I didn’t eat yesterday. Does he ask her about me? Or is this just what fell into his baking rotation for the day?

I’m not hungry, but a cheese-topped bun is hard to resist. Peeta stops his conversation with Haymitch to smile at me as I take one.

“Thank you,” I say quietly as I roll the bun between my hands. Still warm.

Sae sets a plate of two hardboiled eggs in front me. There are toast crumbs stuck to the white of the eggs. Yesterday’s toast crumbs. I look over at the men’s plates – they appear to have scramble with sausage and brightly colored vegetables mixed in.

I’m suddenly hungrier than I thought, and the scramble looks much better than day-old eggs.

“Can I have some of that?” I ask Sae.

“Sorry, hon. The boys ate it all. You come late, you get what’s left and that –“ Sae points to yesterday’s eggs, “- is what’s left. You’re lucky Peeta wouldn’t let anyone eat the buns until you came down.”

I take a petulant bite of the bun. It’s delicious and probably not an accident, but I’m still miffed about the eggs.

“I thought she was supposed to take care of me,” I mumble under my breath at Haymitch.

“First, you’re not in a position to suppose anything,” Haymitch says pointedly as he finishes up his eggs and grabs a cheese bun of his own. “And secondly, there’s a difference between care and babying, and I don’t think Sae’s the babying type.”

“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” I say while hording five more buns for myself and stacking my plate full of them.

“Even you can’t eat that many buns,” Haymitch says, putting two more buns on his plate.

“I’m saving them for later,” I reply as I take a large bite out my second bun. I think about not eating the hardboiled eggs out of spite, but I’m afraid if I do, they’ll just show up again tomorrow.

“I can make more,” Peeta interjects.

I grab the last bun in the basket and put it on my plate. “This will be fine. But thank you, Peeta, it’s so nice to be _cared_ for,” I say not taking my eyes off Haymitch.

Peeta rolls his eyes and finishes off the one bun he managed to secure for himself. “You two are impossible.” He drops his napkin on the table and gets up, taking his plate over to the sink. He starts vigorously scrubbing the pan Sae left soaking there.

“Glad to see you still have some fight left in you,” Haymitch chuckles. “I was worried.”

“You have a funny way of showing it. You never bothered to show up until Peeta started dragging you over here. Some mentor.”

“Sometimes the best thing a mentor can do is not stand in their student’s way.”

“Our maybe my mentor realizes mine is a situation where the mentor has no knowledge or business giving advice.”

Haymitch takes a minute to look at his mug of coffee quietly, likely hoping it was something else. “You’re half right. I’ve got no business giving advice about it, but I know a little bit more about living through a situation like yours than you give me credit for.”

I’m shamed into silence. He’s right. Sometimes I forget how alike Haymitch and I are, how similar our lives have been. I slide him one of my cheese buns, it’s the best I can do at the moment.

Peeta has finished his dish duty and is standing at the door. “Haymitch?”

Haymitch looks at Peeta, then at the new cheese bun, then me. “I’m going to stay for a bit longer. Still have some breakfast to finish.” He picks up the bun and waves it Peeta.

“All right,” Peeta shakes his head. “Have a good day, Katniss. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I eat my eggs and slide my pile of buns back into the basket and pull it over to my side of the table. Sae takes my plate and is gone no more than five minutes after Peeta.

Now it’s just me, Haymitch and Buttercup, who has curled up in Peeta’s empty chair to soak up the warmth left behind.

“You’re not as alone as you think you are, Katniss.”

My shame turns to irritation. “It certainly feels that way while I rattle around in here. Except for when Sae brings her granddaughter at dinnertime, I’m by myself all day.”

The statement takes a moment to sink in. “Peeta doesn’t come back after breakfast?”

“No,” I reply. “It’s always the same as today: he comes for breakfast with bread, does the dishes, wishes me a good day, and leaves.”

“Huh.”

I hadn’t given our daily routine much thought. I haven’t much energy to think about anything, but now that Haymitch has pointed it out – I realize how strange it is that I _have_ been so alone. I consider that I might still be more of a prisoner than I understood. But the thought that truly worries me is that aside from the day of his return, I have never been with Peeta alone. He never arrives to breakfast before the others, even though I know he’s awake, and he always makes sure to leave before Sae. Fears I hadn’t allowed myself to consider are suddenly impossible to ignore.

“Do you think he’s still afraid to be around me?” I ask. “Afraid of himself around me, I mean?”

Haymitch rubs the scruff on his jaw. “I don’t think so. It’s not like before. I think that head doctor in the Capitol did him a fair bit of good. He knows you’re not a threat.”

“But am I a friend?” My voice catches in my throat. So much has changed. Peeta was only starting to come back to himself during our unit’s time in the Capitol. He may be able to tell fake memories from real ones, but all I’ve done since the Quarter Quell – leaving him in the arena, treating him like a mutt, voting for the Games, killing Coin – is nothing like the Katniss he had in his head, the one he loved. Maybe the affection he had for me is well and truly gone and I’m the one killed it. I can feel my heart beating faster and my hands start to shake.

“Katniss,” Haymitch stills my right hand with his own on the table, “whatever you’re thinking, it’s not true. I’ve talked with Peeta since we got back. He doesn’t hate you.”

“Then why doesn’t he come?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks you need time to grieve. Maybe _he_ needs some time to grieve. Or maybe he’s giving you the space to decide what you want. All I know is he didn’t bake these cheese buns for me.”

I look down at my left hand, where I have crushed one of the buns. Didn’t I just tell myself they weren’t an accident? Prim’s flowers. The cheese buns. And now, space. This is Peeta’s way of being kind. If there is one thing old Peeta was, it’s kind. Which means he _has_ found his way back to himself.

If only I could be the Katniss he thought I was before. But even if I could shake my grief, I don’t think that Katniss ever existed. The hijacking and the war, they showed him who I really was and that can’t be forgotten. We’ve been distant before, but then the Tour and the Quell brought us back together. Now I’ve caused him suffering again and there’s nothing to keep us from just drifting apart. He’ll get bored with my sullenness and when Sae finally leaves me to my own devices, the daily breakfasts and the breads will stop too, no doubt. Then I really _will_ be alone. It’d be better for Peeta though, to no longer have me as a millstone around his neck. He’d finally be free to go his live his life. Wasn’t that the plan with the Quarter Quell anyway?

Haymitch reaches across the table and wipes a tear off my cheek with his thumb. I bat his hand away and finish the job myself. I’m not going to cry. Not in front of Haymitch, not in front of anyone.

“Sweetheart, I said I had no business giving you advice on this, and I probably don’t, but I’m going to do it anyway,” Haymitch sighs before he continues. “Don’t be like me.”

“I’m not.” I reply with my jaw tight.

“Ever since my games, until you two showed up, everyone associated with me ended up dead. My family, my girl, 46 tributes. I figured I’d be doing everyone a favor if I just died, only I was too much of a coward to ever do it. So, I got as close as I could. I locked myself away and did my best to drown myself in a bottle. Maybe if I hadn’t done it, I could have been a better mentor and some of those other 46 kids would’ve survived. I dunno. I ask myself about that every day. The truth is, as long as Snow was in charge, they would have been hurt anyway. But if there’s one thing you two have taught me, it’s that a little bit of care can make the hurt bearable. But you gotta open yourself up to it. Shutting people out doesn’t protect anyone, least of all you.”

He’s wrong. Prim is dead because of me. Caring for her is what put a target on her back. I sit with my lips sealed. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll pay my debts to Peeta and let him go free. It’s the best gift I could give to him.

Haymitch shakes his head and tosses his napkin on the table. “Peeta’s right, we are impossible. Look, I know I’m a lost cause. But Snow is gone now and there’s a boy across the way who could use a little healing himself. I’ve seen you pull off the impossible twice and I think you could do it again, just as long as you don’t try to do it all yourself – because that’s the one thing that’s never worked out for you.”

“Got it,” I say with a finality that I hope ends the conversation.

Haymitch pushes himself out from the table and heads to the door. “You want me to skip breakfast tomorrow?”

“You can do whatever you like, Haymitch. You always do.”

“See you tomorrow then, Katniss,” Haymitch sighs. When he continues his voice has an edge of irony to it. “Have a good day.”


	6. April

Dr. Aurelius is encouraged my newfound energy. Each day, I’m able to do more and more. I go for regular walks, pushing myself closer and closer to the woods each trip thanks to my increasing stamina and from the work of the teams clearing the roads. I read more of the plant book and add to my list; I bathe regularly; sometimes I help Greasy Sae with my meals. And I work on Peeta’s pot.

That last activity is the one Dr. Aurelius is most excited by. “It’s good to look beyond yourself,” he says when I tell him about the project. “Helping others can be excellent for healing yourself.”

He has, of course, no idea about my true plan. One that goes hand in hand with the walks and plant research. Once I’ve given him his pot, I’ve decided the best way to pay off the remainder of my debt to Peeta - I am going into the woods once and for all. I’ll live off the land. Two rounds in an arena have prepared me as much as my hunting has. I know no one could do it better than I can, a wild thing among wild things. In the event should something happen, it will hurt no one but me. They’ll be better off, Peeta especially, without me to drag them down.

There’s no reason to tell Dr. Aurelius, or anyone, about my plan. I’ve learned by now they’ll only try to talk me out of it, even if it’s for their own good. Instead I decide that I’ll need to convince everyone that I’m better, so they’ll suspect nothing until the day they find me gone.

I’ve never been much of an actress, so I listen closely during my calls with Dr. Aurelius and put as much of his advice into action as I can. I still get heavily fatigued at times, but my naps are shorter and less frequent.

On today’s walk, I make it as far as the ruins of my old house in the Seam. The rebuilding teams have cleared away most of the debris and only the foundation remains. I briefly consider looking to see if anything is left, but I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I’m about to turn on my heel when I spot something green and leafy near the spot the back door used to be. Curiosity draws me closer. I bend down and pluck one of the broad, sawtooth leaves and crush it lightly between my fingers before inhaling its distinct aroma – somewhere between mint and thyme.

The catnip my mother transplanted alongside the house has somehow survived, thrived even. When she asked me to bring some plants home from the woods with the roots intact, she insisted it was because the leaves were helpful for colds, but we both knew it was really for Buttercup, for Prim. I don’t have a trowel or even a knife on me, so I dig in with my hands. Bits of my old house drive their way under my nailbeds along with the dirt, but I’m able to work three intact roots from the soil.

My hands and knees are dirty as I walk home carrying my three-foot weeds, but as I pass the former miners, now rebuilders, covered in ash and dust, I feel much less conspicuous than I did when I walked out clean and shiny. I plant the catmint alongside the primroses and water them all myself. I tear off a few leaves and toss them on the kitchen floor for Buttercup, where he enacts his other version of Crazy Cat while I wash the remains of my old home from beneath my nails.

The weight of the memories and the physical exertion are too much, and in no time, I fall asleep in my old spot by the hearth, something I haven’t done for weeks.

I wake up about an hour before Greasy Sae is set to return to make my dinner. Though I’ve already done more than I planned on today, I still slide Peeta’s pot out from beneath my chair and pull the rags out from its interior. The process has taken me days, in part because I still tire so easy and in part because I want it to be perfect. I finished the lid first, where the area around the handle gave me the most trouble. The lid is now immaculate. Even after I started the base, I kept coming back to find one more spot of rust, ash, or oil to remove from its surface. The pot itself has been more of a challenge and the sound of salt against metal still grates at my nerves, but I find it’s bearable if I cover it by singing.

_The cuckoo, she’s a pretty bird, she sings as she flies,_

_She brings us glad tidings and she tells us no lies._

There are so many lyrics about birds in the songs my father taught me. It’s as if he knew I’d turn into one myself someday. Or maybe it’s just that my people always wanted to fly away.

_She sucks on pretty flowers to make her voice clear,_

_And she never sings cuckoo till the spring of the year._

I work on Peeta’s pot for twenty minutes before I hide it again and clean up for Sae’s arrival. I’m getting close, so close to my goals. I’m strong enough to make it to the edge of the District and back again. Peeta’s pot is almost done. As I help Sae with dinner _and_ clean-up, she remarks that I’ll hardly need her soon. I give her a smile in reply. _When I’m gone_ , I think, _Sae and her granddaughter can have the house_. I owe her as much.

I’m about to head to bed, content with how everything is falling into place, when I remember I have one more debt to repay – and the perfect idea for how to repay it.

Effie picks up on the second ring. “Katniss! How _are_ you? You haven’t answered a single one of my letters.” I think of the stack of letters still on the mantle, from my mother, from Effie, from Annie, from Delly. I haven’t bothered to respond to any of them. “Things are moving so fast in the Capitol nowadays I can hardly keep my head from spinning.”

Effie babbles Capitol gossip for twenty-two minutes straight before I can get a word in edgewise. She’s accustomed to my grunts of assent equaling conversation between us. I take it that she and my old prep team found a place in the new government in Plutarch’s communications department. Plutarch, for all his ambitions and coldness, appears to have rewarded his fellow rebels, conscripted as they may have been, for their loyalty. When she finally takes a breath, I put in my request.

“Effie, do you think you could do a favor for me?”

“Anything for you, Katniss dear.”

“I’d like to see if I could get a delivery of a flock of geese sent to District Twelve.”

“Geese? Well. Yes, I suppose I can make that happen. But why _ever_ do you need geese? Are they not feeding you well enough?” Effie sounds ready to make some strongly worded calls on my behalf.

“No, nothing like that. They’re for Haymitch actually, I want to give them as a present.”

“Haymitch?”

“He said he wants to start a hobby and I remember him mentioning how much he loved feeding his family’s geese as kid.” I’m no good as a liar, but Effie has always been easy to convince.

“Katniss. I will make sure that a flock of Panem’s finest geese are shipped to his door with the next train, you have my word.”

“Effie, you are best.”

“Are you sure there’s not anything I can do for you?”

“I’m fine, Effie. This is perfect. Thank you.”

I plan to be gone before the next train comes, but the thought of Haymitch chasing after a dozen of whatever impractically beautiful geese Effie sends is enough to send me to sleep with a smile on my face.

\----

I may have gone to bed with a smile on my face, I’m not asleep for long before the nightmares are back. Not that they ever went away. They’re usually not present during my daytime naps, when the sun or my fatigue keeps them at bay. But even with the War over and the Games permanently cancelled, they play every night without fail. Old dreams of Rue and Mutts and Cato have been joined with new ones of Cinna and Mags, Boggs and Mitchell, Finnick – so often Finnick, and of course Prim.

The ones with Prim are the hardest. In the most frequent version, we are separated by a wall of flames. She’s screaming my name, but the sounds I hear don’t line up with the movement of her mouth, Instead, her cries are magnified a hundred times by a flock of jabberjays that echo her voice back to me while they dive at my face. I do the only thing I can and try to push my way through the wall of fire to her. It starts to burn my skin instantly. There’s a searing pain as my skin bubbles up, turns black and falls off me in flakes. With a real burn, the pain would stop eventually as the nerves are damaged, but dreams don’t care for reality and every step is agony. The flames continue to eat me up, but I never get any closer to saving Prim. I usually wake up when I’m whittled down to bones, my screams blending with hers in my ears.

This time when I wake up, I vomit on the floor bedside my bed. I’m shaking and covered in sweat. I light the lamp and toss a shirt over the puke, so Buttercup isn’t temped to investigate. I make my way downstairs on shaky legs to get a drink of water. As I stand at the sink, I notice two things, one: there is blood beneath my nails; and two: the light is on in Peeta’s house. I wonder if he had a nightmare too. The blood, however, requires my more immediate attention. I’ve scratched deeply at the grafts of skin on my arms and caused them to bleed. I rinse them under the tap, until the cool water runs clear. Then I rip several leaves off the plantain plant on the windowsill and chew on them until they are soft, place them over my raw skin, and hold in them in place with a snuggly wrapped bandage. The leaves soften the sharp edge of my pain and my heart starts to return to a regular rhythm.

I know there will be no more sleeping for me tonight. I busy myself with boiling water for tea and lighting a small fire in the hearth. After my tea has steeped, I turn out the lamp and move to the hearth, the dim light from the fire forming an arc of protection against the darkness.

As I settle myself in my chair, I let my thoughts return to the light across the way. Peeta still has nightmares too. For all his cheer and bread in the morning, his nights are still troubled.

We used to share similar nightmares. I wonder if his are still like mine, of the Games and of the War, or if his hijacking still holds at night and he dreams of me as a mutt. Does he bolt awake, looking for me, ready to kill?

I think about how we shared a bed and helped comfort each other in the middle of the night. How sometimes his presence was enough to keep the nightmares away. That doesn’t feel possible anymore. I’ve been too wrapped up in my own head to notice it, but now that I have the space to think about it, I realize I miss his arms and the certainty that I would be safe inside them. I pull my mother’s shawl from the back of the chair and wrap it tightly around my shoulders. It’s a poor substitute.

I’ve never thought of myself as someone who need physical affection. At my first reaping, I yelled at my mother as much as held her. Gale and I hunted, not hugged. Prim, Prim was different, she was a snuggler from the start. If she wasn’t cradling some animal, she was curled up around mother or me. It’s part of why I always felt the need to protect her. She was gentle and soft, open-hearted, and caring. I hardened myself so she wouldn’t have to.

And then came Peeta, whose hand would slide into mine so easily, who was so effortless with his kisses, whose arms were always open when we were in the world of the Games, on camera and off. I never had his ease. Yes, I was in complete control of my body in the woods, I could climb every tree and pass through dry leaves silently. Peeta, on the other hand, might as well be an elephant in the woods, but in showing affection he was a natural.

Aside from an incidental brush of hand when passing a slice of bread, Peeta hasn’t touched me once since his return to Twelve. We’ve been like this before, after the first Games, when I broke his heart. But we’d both been cold then. This is distance isn’t cold. It’s polite and cautious – as if I’m no more than an acquaintance to him.

Even after all we’ve been through, the hijacking erased it all and he has to get to know me from scratch. I think of how he had to ask so many questions of Unit 451 to confirm even basic details about himself and District Twelve. After all I’ve done, he’s probably decided I’m not worth the effort. I’d feel hurt about it, but isn’t my whole plan to leave Twelve about giving him a clean slate?

Peeta’s light is on still on across the way. I wonder what time it is. Maybe he’s just up early to bake today’s bread – baker’s hours. The sun is still far from rising, though.

I consider going over to check on him. Wouldn’t I want the same from him? But something keeps me in my chair.

Instead I put Peeta’s pot into my lap and scrub in the flickering firelight, singing the Cuckoo song softly to myself to drown out the salt.

_O, meeting is a pleasure, a’parting is grief,_

_But an inconstant lover, is worse than a thief,_

_A thief will rob you of all that you have,_

_But an inconstant lover will send you to the grave._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cuckoo, She’s a Pretty Bird: http://research.culturalequity.org/rc-b2/get-audio-detailed-recording.do?recordingId=12749
> 
> And a more modern take: https://youtu.be/h6ow2Z5Jh9Y


	7. April

Can a piece of cookware be beautiful? I never would have given a pot a second thought before, but after our hours of spent together scrubbing, then oiling and baking, I have become quite fond of this piece of metal. There are some deep scratches on the sides and a small crack in the lid that even salt and lard can’t fix, but as Sae promised, the pot, now shiny and black, looks almost as good as new.

I can’t exactly say the same for myself, but I’m stronger now, more like my old self. I can walk to the edge of the District without tiring and have spent a lazy afternoon or two in the woods. I bring a bow, but don’t bother to shoot at anything unless some creature practically trips over me. I don’t doubt my skills are still there, but hunting has lost some of its appeal. Something I know will fix itself when I move to the wilderness.

Most of my time in the woods in spent making plans for my departure. I’ve made a good collection of medicinal herbs and memorized much of the plant guide. I’ve taken advantage of Sae’s belief in my burgeoning interest in cooking to learn more about smoking and preserving different kinds of meat. With only myself to supply, I’ll be able to store up for winter.

Winter, though still months away, is at the forefront of my planning. I’ll need shelter before then. My first thought was of the cabin by the lake, but there are too many memories there and others know where it is now. The lake is long and wide though, and there’s a chance another cabin or two may have survived on the far side. The only way to find out is to look, but there’s no way I could get there and back in a day. I don’t want anyone to suspect anything until I’m gone. It’s just a risk I’ll have to take. And if it doesn’t work out? Well, it’ll make no difference to anyone I leave behind.

Haymitch’s geese should arrive next week and Peeta’s pot is done. I have a few letters left to draft, a handful of things to pack and everything will be in order. I’ll be gone by noon on Sunday and District Twelve can rebuild itself without me.

I look back at the pot in front of me. I’m fond of it, but I don’t know if it looks gift worthy. Something is missing. Then it hits me. What is a gift without a bow? We’d always use a scrap of something to tie up our packages, twine, a strip of fabric – surely Peeta deserves that much.

Without making a decision to go there, I find myself standing in front of the wardrobe that holds all my clothes from the Victory Tour. A cabinet of all the pretty dresses Cinna made especially for me. It’s the first time I can bear to look at them since returning home, there’s no sense in wearing anything like this here and definitely not in the woods. My fingers run over the silky fabrics before they land on the soft tulle of the piece I was looking for – the orange dress that looks like autumn leaves – soft orange, Peeta’s favorite color. I pull the dress out and think of how I wore it for the speeches in District 11, where Peeta promised a twelfth of our winnings to Rue and Thresh’s families.

 _Did they survive the war?_ I wonder how the rest of the Districts are faring. I hear so little about anything these days. I make a mental note to include a request to find them in my letter to Effie and ask her to give them the rest of my winnings if possible.

I pull the sash off the dress, it feels a shame to take apart anything Cinna had made, but I know he would understand, even appreciate, its final purpose. The sash is long and soft and beautiful and has the bonus of letting Peeta know exactly who the gift is from.

I’ve thought quite a bit about how to deliver my gift and I can’t come up with the right words to say to Peeta in person, so I’ve decided to just leave it on his porch. It’s the simplest way. The note is simple too: _For Peeta. From Twelve. For Bread. Ask Sae, if you need to._

I tuck my note inside and tie the sash around the middle of the pot, it’s long enough to make an extravagantly sized bow. Effie would approve. It’s about time for my usual afternoon stroll. I don’t know what Peeta does during the day, but I’ve never seen him outside during my walks, so now should be a safe time to drop it off.

I try to appear casual as I lug the pot across the Victor’s green to Peeta’s house. Buttercup, it seems, has different ideas, as he crawls out from under the porch to follow me. Maybe he can smell the bacon fat I used to season the pot. He starts to weave between my legs, making it hard to walk straight. Stupid cat.

“Go away,” I hiss at Buttercup under my breath while I continue my way across the lawn.

Instead he rubs against me and yowls.

“There’s nothing here for you. Go back to the house and I’ll feed you there.”

Buttercup yowls again. He leaps up with his paw extended to bat at the trailing end of the sash.

“Stop it, you’ll ruin the bow!” I jerk the pot away and the motion is enough to set the lid loose and clattering to the gravel. The sound sends Buttercup skittering under Peeta’s porch. He hisses at me angrily.

I set the pot on the stairs of Peeta’s porch and grab the lid from the ground. I make my own louder hiss, “To you too!” and Buttercup disappears into the shadows. I replace the lid and adjust the bow. All is well. I pick up the pot to set it next to the front door, when I realize the door is open. And Peeta is standing there staring at me.

“Katniss?”

How much of that did he see?

“Peeta,” I say, while I try to collect myself. “This is for you.” I shove the pot into his hands. It’s all I can think to do.

Peeta shifts the heavy pot, lifts the lid, and sees it’s empty except for the note. “Thank you, I guess.”

“Sae got it from the rubble. It was all rusty, but I cleaned it up for you, and it took days and I had to scrape it with salt, and it sounded awful, but it’s clean and seasoned and almost as good as new.” I babble stupidly, avoiding Peeta’s eyes. There’s a moment of silence that allows me to be grateful the words have stopped coming from my mouth, but also to realize what a stupid gift this is and what an idiot I am. It’s a long moment. “It’s good for bread.”

“It is.” He says, with a hint of surprise. “You get the best crusts with these. Thank you, Katniss. That’s very thoughtful.”

I dare to look up at Peeta’s face. His voice was quiet, but he’s smiling.

“You’re welcome.” I don’t know what else to say.

Peeta shifts the pot in his arms. “Does this mean the singing will stop?”

I look at him with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been singing recently. Mostly something about a bird. It was beautiful. I’ve been keeping my windows open to hear it.” Peeta nods at the pot in his hand. “You said it took days and there was an awful sound. I was afraid you might have just been singing to cover the noise and that you might stop now.”

“Oh.” How does he know me so well even now? “I guess I was.”

“You must of have worked really hard on this then. You were singing a lot.”

“It’s nothing. It was just something to do, really.” Peeta listening to me singing reminds me of his story from the cave. It reminds me that hearing the video of me singing The Hanging Tree helped Peeta remember my father and how that was the first good news I had about his hijacking. It’s too much. I start to head back down the stairs. “Enjoy your pot.”

“Katniss?”

I want to go home, but there’s something in his voice that stops me. I really look at his eyes for the first time in our conversation. They look sad and tired, almost like he’d been crying. But it doesn’t make sense - Peeta’s fine, isn’t he?

“Could you help me with something before you go?” 

“Okay.” _There’s a boy across the way that could use some healing._ Isn’t that Haymitch said? Maybe he’s struggling just like me. But that’s impossible – he’s always acted like his old self at breakfast.

“Come on in.” Peeta nods his head toward the interior and starts to carry the pot in.

I follow him into the kitchen, where he sets his pot down on the counter. I realize as I walk in, that this is the first time I’ve ever been inside Peeta’s house. It’s strikes me as funny that I’ve never been here before, but I guess he always just came over to my house. His kitchen, as I suspected, has the same basic layout as mine, but the feel of the room couldn’t be more different. This is a working space. There are pans and trays everywhere and several 50-pound bags of flour sit stacked in the corner. Eleven loaves of bread are lined up in a neat row on the table. I knew he was baking, obviously, but not like this.

I lift a loaf. “You made all this?”

“All the recipes I know are in bulk. It feels more familiar this way,” Peeta shrugs and looks down at the bread. “I give the loaves to the families in the other houses. They’re doing hard work and it’s something for me to do. I’m used to working. This makes me feel less…useless.”

“You’re not useless.”

Peeta says nothing. His finger draws little circles in the dusting of flour still on the table.

“Do you remember what Mitchell looked like?”

I’m thrown by this question, which seems to come from nowhere. “Mitchell?”

“From our unit. Squad 451.” 

The one Peeta pushed into the pod when he was hijacked, I tread carefully. “Um. He was older, maybe 40s? Great shot, terrible actor.”

“But what did he _look_ like? Cleft chin or smooth? Were there scars or moles on his face? Did he have heavy eyebrows? What color where his eyes?” There’s an edge of desperation to Peeta’s voice. I worry it might signal the start of an episode.

He see what be the look of confusion on my face. “Follow me.” 

Peeta strides out of the room and heads down the hall. I wonder if it’s safe to follow. The windows are all open. I could always yell. I take a deep breath and follow Peeta into what in my home is the study. Peeta has transformed his into a painting studio.

There are finished canvases stacked all along the walls. A dozen painted eyes look back at me. Mags. Wiress. The Morphling from Six. Brutus. Darius. Portia. Peeta’s prep team, whose names I can’t remember. They are instantly recognizable and beautiful, but like Peeta’s other paintings, I hate to look at them. I look away from them to Peeta who is standing before his easel, staring at a half-finished painting. The bottom half looks to be mostly complete and is clearly a District 13 military uniform. But the figure has no face, or at least not currently. There are traces of at least one attempt that has been painted over in white. This is where the questions are coming from.

Peeta’s eyes are wild and shining. “I can’t remember what he looked like. I’d only been a part of the unit for a day, maybe two before -.” He stops himself. “Everyone else is clear, but I can’t remember anything about Mitchell, not even the color of his hair.”

“Peeta, it’s okay.” I step toward him.

“It’s _not_ okay. Everyone else who died because of me I can paint with perfect clarity. I remember their faces. I see them in my dreams. But even in my dreams, Mitchell is all foggy. The only part that’s clear is his body all black with tar and strung up by those barbs. I can’t remember anything about his face.”

“It isn’t your fault. You were still confused then. You didn’t mean to – “

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Peeta throws the unfinished canvas toward the row of paintings leaning against the walls, “but I’m still here and they’re not. I owe them and I can’t even remember the color of his hair!” Peeta’s hands fly to his head and the knuckles gripping his hair are white.

The room vibrates with Peeta’s anxiety, but neither of us move. I feel like I’m in the woods, eyes locked with a buck. I know if I move too quickly, he will run or charge. Every movement, every sound matters now.

“It was brown.” I say quietly after several moments.

“Brown?”

“Dark brown, with bits of grey in his sideburns. Closed cropped, like they did for all the men they sent out.”

“Okay.” His hands in his hair relax and his arms drift to his sides.

I think about Mitchell. He was so ordinary looking, nothing really memorable, but that wouldn’t make sense to Peeta, he sees the specifics in everyone.

“He had a wide forehead. His chin didn’t have cleft, it was roundish, almost like a little ball sticking out.”

This wakes Peeta up. He rushes over to the desk and grabs a pad of paper and begins to sketch.

“That’s - that’s good. What else?” Peeta looks at me, his eyes full of need.

I allow myself to breathe. My fear begins to be replaced by sadness. I had no idea the weight Peeta was still living with. A burden almost as big as my own.

“His ears were a little too big.” I think of the faces Mitchell made when Cressida made us do reaction shots, the ones that made us laugh so much. “His eyes were gray, with little crinkles at the edges. And his nose, it was longish. Very straight, a little like an arrow. And his lips were thin.”

That’s all I can remember. I wonder if it’s enough. Could I get Peeta a photo somehow? I don’t relish the idea of trying to contact someone in District Thirteen, but I’d do it if Peeta needed it.

Peeta erases a part of his sketch and draws some more. He’s in that intense drawing mode, the one I remember from when we worked on the plant book together. I start to wonder if I should stay or if I should go.

The plant books. The first normal thing we’d done together. _We owe them, need to remember them._

An idea strikes me.

Maybe I do have a way to help Peeta with healing a little. Maybe I have one more thing to contribute before I go. I’m supposed to talk to Dr. Aurelius tomorrow. He’s never said anything to me about Peeta in our calls, I don’t supposed he can, but he would know if it would help him. I’ll ask him if it’s a good idea.

“How’s this?” Peeta lifts the sketchbook and shows me the page. It’s rough, but it’s definitely Mitchell – almost.

“The eyebrows are a bit too thick. His were flatter.”

Peeta studies the sketch for a moment and shakes his head, “You’re right.” Peeta amends the sketch and shows it to me again.

“That’s him,” I say and Peeta’s body relaxes with relief.

“How did you do that?” I ask. “You said you didn’t remember him at all and I’m not that great of a describer.”

“It was enough. What you said, it was enough to help me remember.” Peeta puts his pad down and walks back to the unfinished canvas and picks it up off the floor. He settles it back onto the easel. “Now I don’t have to just see him in those awful wires. This means a lot.” 

Peeta turns toward me with his arms raised and I automatically stiffen before I realize he’s stepping in to give me a hug. “Thank you, Katniss.”

It’s the first time Peeta’s touched me in ages and I flinch at it.

I try to cover and return the gesture, but Peeta ends the hug quickly and steps back, worried he’s done something wrong. I hate that he thinks that some part of me is still afraid of him and I hate even more that he’s not wrong. I want to assure him it’s okay, but I’ve never been the one good with words. Instead we both just look at our boots.

I’m the first to break the silence. “I was just about to go for a walk. You can come with me if you want to.”

“I’d like to work on this while it’s fresh,” Peeta sounds uncertain. “I don’t want to lose the image again.”

“Yeah, no. Of course. Let me know if you need anything else.” I turn to head out the hallway.

“Katniss?”

“Yes?”

“Can I walk with you tomorrow?”

“Yes.” I say. “I’d like that.” And I know that even despite my moment of trepidation, I would.


	8. May

Peeta joins me for a walk the next day. And the day after. And the day after that.

On the fourth day, Peeta arrives at breakfast with a new type of bread. It’s perfectly round with an arc of wheat cut into each side of the top, made more prominent by a light dusting of flour. It’s elegant in a way I never though bread could be.

Peeta hands it to me with a smile. “For you.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Peeta nearly bounds into the kitchen and brings me back a bread knife and cutting board, a broad grin on his face. “Cut into it.” 

I take the knife and begin to slice. The crust cracks pleasingly under the blade, but the bread inside is still soft and dotted with fruit and nuts. I’m skilled with a knife in many ways, but making perfectly even slices, the way Peeta does, isn’t one of them. Still, I manage to carve out a decent slice and bring it to my mouth. It is, in a word, glorious.

A pleased hum escapes my lips, “What’s in this?”

“Dried figs and walnuts. The fruit makes it trickier. It took me a few tries to get the rise time exact, but this one felt right.” Peeta looks at me nervously. “Do you like it?”

“It’s wonderful.” I swipe up a flake of crust from the cutting board with my finger and pop it in my mouth. “It isn’t like your other breads. The crust is different. Crunchier.”

“That’s your cast iron, Katniss. We didn’t normally make bread that way, because you can only do one at a time, but my father would make it for us on special occasions. I’ve never done it myself and I wanted to get it right first. I hope you didn’t mind waiting.”

We had baked all our bread in a pot since we didn’t have a proper oven, but it was nothing like this. I shake my head slightly. “You didn’t have to go to all that trouble. It was supposed to be a gift.”

Of course Peeta would upstage my gift with a better one. I know he isn’t trying to outdo me on purpose, but it seems that I will never be able to balance the scales between us.

“No trouble,” Peeta assures me. “It was actually kind of fun. It’s been a while since I tried baking something new. It gave me something to look forward to.”

“You keep experimenting and I’ll keep eating,” Haymitch chimes in with a full mouth from his seat at the table. I’d almost forgotten he was there, and he has taken advantage of the opportunity to eat half the loaf. “This is good stuff.”

“You should try it with goat cheese,” Peeta responds while neatly slicing the remaining half of the bread. “It would go so well with goat cheese.”

The bread feels like it goes stale in my mouth.

Haymitch nods knowingly. “I’ll get around to that, just as soon as someone around here gets a goat.”

Goat cheese was the one luxury we had. I don’t know that I could eat it without thinking of Prim. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to eat it again.

Peeta notices that I’ve stopped eating. “Or just plain is good. Not everyone likes goat ch –“ He catches himself mid-word and his eyes drop in shame. “Sorry, Katniss. I didn’t mean- “

“Mean what?” I cut him off and grab another slice. “It’s really good bread, Peeta. Thank you.”

Greasy Sae thankfully changes the subject for us by placing a steaming pot of rolled oats with raisins and cinnamon in the center of the table. I spoon myself out a bowl and take a bite, but whether it’s my mood or the oatmeal, my mouth feels glued shut for the rest of the meal.

Peeta engages Haymitch in a conversation about chess strategy that becomes nothing more than noise in my ears. I give up even trying to appear like I’m listening when Buttercup jumps into my lap and rubs his mangy chin against my body. I pull him close to my chest with one arm and poke at my oatmeal with another. Buttercup doesn’t even seem to mind that I have no scraps to feed him today.

After Sae takes my half-finished bowl away, Buttercup follows me as I drift back to the comfort of my chair by the hearth.

When Haymitch prepares to go, he gestures to the remaining butt of the loaf. “You gonna finish that?” He asks.

I shake my head no. Haymitch reaches for the bread and Peeta slaps his hand.

“You know you’ll make her another.” Haymitch brushes Peeta’s hand away and pockets the bread. “See ya tomorrow, sweetheart.”

I give him a half-hearted wave.

In what I suppose is a few minutes later, I hear my name spoken from near the door.

“Katniss?”

I look up from watching my fingers scratch the top of Buttercup’s head to the doorway where Peeta stands. I had forgotten he was still here. Sae is already gone. “What’s that?” I ask.

“I asked if you wanted me to come back for a walk this afternoon.”

“Oh.” I think for a moment, my brain feels as gluey as my mouth did at the table. “I’m not sure when I’m going today. I’ll come get you when I’m ready.”

“Okay,” he replies uncertainly.

“The bread was good, Peeta. I’m glad you like the pot.” I give Peeta what I hope is a smile. “See you later?”

“See you later.”

When I’m sure that everyone is gone, I trod upstairs and crawl into bed. Buttercup curls up by my elbows and we miss Prim together. Regardless of what I said to Peeta, I know I won’t be moving until Sae shows up for dinner. So much for my one task today.

\----

In the days that follow, the fig bread doesn’t make a reappearance, but Peeta continues experimenting with his new baking method, showing up with artfully etched loaves of rye and other hearty grains. They are beautiful and delicious and none of them make me sad.

Peeta and I resume our afternoon walks together. Excepting the occasional day when movement and daylight is too much for me to bear, they become as much of a part of our routines as breakfast.

We walk in loops around the Victor’s Village or along the edge of the Seam, avoiding the parts of town that received the most damage. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to get in the way of the workers, who have successfully smothered the coal fires in the mines and have turned their focus to the never-ending job of sorting the rubble and deciding what and how to rebuild.

I don’t say much. Peeta keeps the mood light. He tells me about the intricacies of bread baking – the unique qualities of each flour, the difference between the first and second rise. He admits, somewhat sheepishly, to having written to Effie to see if she could get him samples of raw sourdough from each of the districts. He explains that the wild yeasts are different by region and he wants to try their different flavors and perhaps grow the samples into something he could reproduce himself. It’s knowledge that I don’t need and will never use, but there’s a light in Peeta’s eyes when he talks about crafting the perfect loaf that I wouldn’t take away from him. Besides, it means there’s less silence that I feel the need to fill.

Peeta doesn’t say anything about my absent days and I don’t ask about his paintings. We pretend that we don’t know that the other is anything but fine and we act like a casual stroll in the ruins of your demolished hometown is as normal as a walk in a park.

A few weeks into our new routine, a large box of paper arrives for me on the train along with five large geese and one enormous gander, all with curly white feathers and very extravagant bows around their necks.

I can hear Haymitch yelling at the phone through my window. “Goddammit, Effie! What the hell am I supposed to do with these?!” I pray that Effie either keeps my secret or that the crate of booze that also arrived on the train is enough to keep me safe from Haymitch’s annoyance with his new pets.

I hadn’t planned on still being here. I had promised myself that I would be off in the woods headed to my new solitary life by now. But even though my bag is still packed, I’m not ready to go. The box of paper reminds me that I still have work left to do here.

On our final loop around the Village that afternoon, I tell Peeta I have a project for us to work on together.

“Building a pen for Haymitch’s new geese?”

“Seeing the amount of poop they’ve managed to make in a few hours, that probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I had something else in mind. Do you remember the plant guide you helped me with?”

“The one passed down through your family?”

I nod.

“Was it destroyed?” he asks, concern on his face.

“No. I’ve still got it, but I was thinking we could make something similar – about District Twelve. And the people in the Games. So much has happened and there’s so many people who deserved to be remembered. I was thinking it could be like the plants, you could do the pictures and I’ll do the writing. I know it can be hard to think about all that and if you didn’t want to --”

Peeta stops walking and turns to face me, his face serious. “Yes.”

“Yes?” I’m unsure which part of my ramble he is agreeing to.

“It’s important and we’re the perfect ones to do it. When do you want to start?”

We hear a honk and the yowl of a cat from near Haymitch’s house. Another “goddammit!” soon follows.

“After we build Haymitch a goose pen?” I suggest.

Peeta nods. “After we build Haymitch a goose pen.”

\----

Thom is more than happy to sacrifice a few of the building supplies they’ve scavenged for the sake of the geese, saying he owes Peeta for the bread. Though neither of us are particularly handy builders, we construct something resembling a fence before sundown. Haymitch, who has disappeared inside with a bottle, doesn’t bother to help us corral the geese in the pen. I’d say he’ll thank us when he’s sober, but I know he won’t.

Instead, I invite Peeta to stay for dinner and while Sae cooks, I take him to the study to show him the paper Dr. Aurelius sent. He runs his fingers across the top of a sheet. “This is nice stuff. It’ll take ink well.” Peeta’s eyes drift across the desk. “Who do you want to start with? Your family?”

I follow Peeta’s eyeline to the family photo that sits on the desk. I shake my head. “Not yet.” It’s still too close, too raw to poke at.

“Someone else then.” Peeta stops to think. “Maybe someone from town?”

My eyes light up. “Madge,” I say definitively.

“Madge Undersee? From school?”

I nod. “She was my friend.” The word turns into a sad smile. “She gave me the mockingjay pin that started so much of this. It fits that she should be the beginning.”

Peeta looks at me, surprised. “All this time and I never knew that. Okay then, we start with Madge.”

Peeta sits down and grabs a pencil.

“You should draw her in a pretty white dress.”

“The one she wore for our Victory Tour dinner?”

“And our reaping day.” I think back to that morning. How Gale had been rude and how she bought our strawberries anyway. “I didn’t realize she was my friend until that day. I didn’t think anyone else could stand to be my friend.” The _other than Gale_ is left unspoken. “Madge proved me wrong.”

Peeta starts to sketch and I write down everything I want the world to remember about Madge Undersee.

The work begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fig & Walnut Sourdough: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/01/18/fig-and-walnut-sourdough
> 
> Some elegant geese: https://www.hobbyfarms.com/sebastopol-goose-breed-profile/
> 
> We're halfway through! Thanks for sticking with me and for all the kind comments thus far!


	9. May

We work for hours on the memory book each day. Sometimes Haymitch joins us when he wakes up from his post-breakfast sleep. He spends the day drinking or napping in the chair he dragged into the corner of the room. We invite his contributions, but he insists he’s just there to get away from the “damn birds.”

Because the book takes up so much of our time and energy, Peeta offers that we could combine our walk with his daily bread delivery rounds, but I am surprisingly firm in my refusal.

Peeta doesn’t ask why, so I don’t have to explain that I don’t dare look into the eyes of the people whose lives I ruined, let alone show up on their doorsteps with empty hands, while he gives so generously. Or that I’ve come to treasure our time alone together, where I somehow feel more at ease then when I’m by myself.

My hand still itches to hold his again, but this cautious friendship we are building feels so fragile that I don’t dare to risk it by changing anything.

I’m surprised then, when Peeta suggests we walk to town instead of one of our usual routes.

Despite the lack of clear paths, Peeta’s stride is sure as he leads us to the center of the merchant district and stops at a deep pit in what was once a row of shops and houses.

I don’t have the same knowledge of town as I do of the Seam, but one thing is clear - whether by accident or design, Peeta’s house was obliterated in the bombings.

I stay back at a respectful distance as Peeta surveys the hole that used to be his home. I try to read his face, but from where I’m standing, I can’t tell anything.

After several minutes of silence, Peeta turns his back on the pit and crosses the street to sit on what remains of a wall. I take a quick peek into the pit myself before joining him. There are a few bits of twisted metal that might have once been ovens, but nothing more.

I sit next to Peeta and wait. As I look at the gap where the house used to be, I wonder why he brought me with him. When it was me, I didn’t want anyone to see me in my grief. I couldn’t afford for anyone to know my weakness.

From the corner of my eye, I catch Peeta wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand. I try to look like I didn’t notice.

I’m caught off guard when Peeta speaks to me.

“Thank you for being here,” he says, his voice tight from tears. He takes a shaky breath to even it out. “I needed to see for myself, but I couldn’t bear it alone.”

I meet his swollen eyes and realize that he wants me to see his sorrow, not overlook it. I also grasp, for the first time, that while I lost Prim in the war, Peeta lost his entire family.

“Do you miss them?” I ask carefully.

Peeta stares at the pit for a long time before answering, “My father mostly. Especially when I’m baking. My brothers, sometimes.” He stops before his finishes the list and I’m fairly sure I know why.

Peeta turns to face me. “My family wasn’t very kind to me. Real or not real?”

“I – I don’t know. I didn’t know your family very well and you never talked about them much.” It’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. Peeta knows it too and waits for me to continue. “Your father gave Prim and I good trades for our squirrels and cheese.” I never told him this before, but I suppose now’s the time. “And he visited me after the first reaping. He gave me cookies and said he’d keep an eye on Prim. I think he was a good man.”

“He never stopped her though.” Peeta’s right hand unconsciously drifts to his left forearm, tracing what I can only imagine are the wounds his mother inflicted on him. “They seem like something the Capitol would have put in my head, but there’s nothing shiny about those memories at all.” He stops and thinks for a moment. “Did the other kids ever talk about it at school?”

I deflect. “Everyone came in all sorts of states to school. Most of us starving.”

“But not with bruises.”

I shake my head. “No. Not those.” That Mrs. Mellark was behind her sons’ bruises was general knowledge at school, but the Mellark boys were so intimidating, in the case of Peeta’s brothers, and well-liked, in the case of Peeta, that nobody dared say anything.

“Of the three of us, I took the most after my father, which annoyed her. At least I think that’s why I got the brunt of it. She wasn’t sad to see me reaped in any case. She never wanted me anyway.”

“What about your brothers?”

“I think they learned early on that it was better to be on her side. They never did anything to protect me. I wasn’t surprised when neither of them volunteered for me.”

“That’s not on them. No one in Twelve ever volunteers.”

Peeta looks me square in the eye. “You did.”

My hand slides across the stone wall and I rest my fingers on the back on his hand as I meet his gaze. “So did you.”

Peeta rotates his hand and holds my fingers in his own. “We protect each other. That’s what we do, right?”

I squeeze his hand. “Right.”

I look back at the pit. “Do you want to rebuild it? The bakery? Your home?”

Peeta lets go of my hand and shakes his head. “No. It’s not my home, and it hasn’t been for a while. I just needed to see it to know for sure.”

He pushes himself up off the wall and holds out a hand to help me up. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” I ask.

“Home.”

We don’t head directly back to Village, and instead wander side by side through the remains of Twelve, lost in our own thoughts. It’s almost dusk by the time we get back. I drop off Peeta at his house and Buttercup joins me from his perch on top of the fountain. On my way back across the lawn, I see Sae through the window of my house, chopping vegetables in the kitchen. Haymitch is sitting on his stoop with Sae’s granddaughter, both of them tossing handfuls cracked corn and oats to his geese. Down along the Village green, I can hear people laughing and cooking and talking with each other about their days.

Buttercup follows me into the kitchen, where I pick up a knife and help Sae with the potatoes.

Peeta is right. This is home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a cold and rainy day and this chapter is short - so you get a bonus chapter this week! Chapter 10 will be up on Thursday.


	10. May

An unfortunate side effect of our work on the memory book is that my nightmares increase in number and variety. In the days after we work on the pages about Madge and her family, the Undersee home shows up in my dreams.

I am in my long silver gown from the Victory Tour standing in the doorway of Mayor Undersee’s office. The riot in District 8 plays on TV. Someone wearing a scarf over their face throws a brick and the glass of the television shatters. The muffled voices of the people on television suddenly become louder and clearer. They are angry, so angry. I can feel the heat of the flames behind them as a large factory burns. The hand of a rebel reaches out to the edge of the television and starts to pull themselves into the room, when a peacekeeper drags them back in. A bottle of clear liquid stuffed with a flaming rag lands in carpet in the middle of room. I slam the door shut behind me just in time to spare myself from the explosion and I find myself face to face with a calm Mayor Undersee.

“Madge is waiting for you downstairs, Katniss. The party can’t start without it you.”

A bullet shoots through the shut door, zips over my shoulder, and hits Mayor Undersee in the chest. Through the hole ripped in the wood, I can see the room is consumed with flames and filled with rebels and peacekeepers.

Mayor Undersee crumbles to the floor and I try to clamber over him in my floor-length gown. _I have to warn Madge,_ I think. _I have to get her out of here._

I stumble down the stairs to the Undersee’s sitting room. Madge is in a white dress, playing The Hanging Tree on the piano and everyone is singing along as if it’s a rousing drinking song. I yank on her arms and try to drag her away from the piano. But it’s as if she’s glued to the keys.

“Madge, you have to come with me,” I plead. “They’re going to bomb your house.”

I scream at the revelers. “You’re all going to die! You have to go to the woods with Gale!”

A smooth white hand with long nails gently removes my hands from Madge’s arms.

“Let her play, dear,” Madge’s mother says quietly, “the music helps with my headaches.”

I turn to look at her with wild eyes and see a puncture wound in the side of her neck, draining blood onto her gray school uniform.

The reveler nearest to Mrs. Undersee has turned into a beautiful candy-pink bird with a long sharp beak. Two of the other party goers near the piano transform into birds as well and begin pecking at the piano keys. Madge plays on, but the transformation seems to shock the merchant man to her right, who spills his drink on the soundboard, which immediately lights into flames.

I turn back to Mrs. Undersee, but she’s disappeared under a flock of the pink birds. I want to shoot them off with my arrows, but I can’t get a good stance in the dress, so I just hit them away with the bow that has suddenly appeared in my hands instead. Mrs. Undersee reaches up to me and presses a round golden pin into my hand. Madge’s song on the piano has changed from The Hanging Tree to an increasingly discordant repetition of Rue’s Mockingjay tune. I try to pull Madge away from the piano again, but she still won’t budge even as her piano burns and all the party goers turn into birds.

“Madge! You have to come!”

The riot from upstairs has made its way downstairs and rebels and peacekeepers and birds are all fighting and screeching and shouting and shooting.

I stumble outside to see the ground beneath the house crack open and the smell of burning coal fills the air. The piano music carries on as the house collapses into the crack like a log that’s burned through.

\----

I wake up in my room alone and covered in sweat. Buttercup is gone, frightened off for the night.

A chill shivers through my body and I realize I left the window open. I curse myself for forgetting and hope I haven’t woken up the entire population of the Victor’s Village with my screams.

As I get out of bed to slide down the sash, I see a light on in Peeta’s kitchen. He must be already up, making his daily bread.

_If I can’t help him make it, I can at least get some company,_ I think as I throw on a cardigan over my pajamas and cross the green in bare feet. _I can’t go back to sleep anyway._

Peeta’s door is unlocked, so I let myself in and head to the kitchen.

“Peeta?”

I’m surprised to find Peeta not at the counter making bread, but standing by the table as if he was waiting for me. I take a moment to survey the room and see no sign of baking at all.

“They were especially bad tonight, weren’t they? Your dreams?” Peeta asks me.

I’m still confused by the lack of baking. “What time is it?”

“2:35.”

I didn’t think to look at the clock before I came over. Of course he wouldn’t be baking yet. “I woke you up, I’m sorry. I forgot to close the window before I went to sleep. I hoped no one had heard me.”

“I can always hear you,” he says quietly. “But it sounded worse than usual tonight, even accounting for the window. Was it about Prim?”

I feel suddenly self-conscious in a way I normally don’t feel around Peeta and I pull my sweater closer around myself, even though it’s not cold here. “No. Madge.”

“Because of the book? We can stop if it’s giving you nightmares.”

“No!” The thought of giving up on saving the good memories, of losing that time with Peeta, is worse than the nightmares. “It’s too important. It really isn’t any worse than usual. I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll make sure I keep the window shut and I’ll – I’ll let you get back to bed.”

“You should stay.” Peeta offers. “My body is so used to the early hours that I couldn’t go back to sleep anyway. I’ll put the kettle on, and we can have some tea.” He pulls out a chair at the table for me.

“Okay,” I say as I take a seat. A wave of relief rushes over me. I don’t have to go back to a dark and empty house. _And_ , I think guiltily, _Peeta’s presence always calms me down after a nightmare_.

Peeta places a pair of mugs on the counter and reaches for a kettle, when he stops himself. “Wait. You prefer hot chocolate to tea. Real or not real?”

“Real.” I smile. “You have chocolate?”

Peeta gives me a knowing look, while he grabs some milk and cream from the icebox. “Any baker worth their salt always has a store of chocolate on hand.” He pours equal amounts of the milk and cream into a pan and turns the burner on low.

“How did I not know this before?” I ask, as Peeta sits down and begins chopping up a bar of chocolate into small bits.

“Because then I wouldn’t have a store of chocolate.”

“I’m deeply offended.” I say as I snag a bit of chocolate from the cutting board. It’s bitter in my mouth – not how I remember chocolate at all.

Peeta laughs as he sees the face the I pull. “It’s unsweetened. I’ll add the sugar later.”

“That’s one way to keep it to yourself.”

Peeta returns to the stove and scrapes the chocolate into the warming milk with his knife, then grabs a whisk and stirs. “It’s not directed at you, I promise. You just have more control over the taste if you add the sugar yourself.” He pulls over a jar of sugar and scoops out a small amount, adding it to his mixture.

A few minutes later, he brings over two steaming mugs. I sip mine and let the warm liquid settle on my tongue. The chocolate is rich and not too sweet. “It’s good.” I confirm. I take another drink before continuing. “I am sorry I woke you, but it’s nice to have some company. It’s awful to wake up from a nightmare alone.” I curse myself for letting that last part slip. I have spent more nights than I care to admit to thinking about how much I miss having Peeta in my bed to comfort me and keep the nightmares at bay, but I know it isn’t fair to ask that of him anymore, if it ever was fair to begin with. The conflicted look on his face confirms it. “I didn’t mean, it’s not -- you don’t owe me anything.” I lower my head to my drink.

“I almost came over when I heard you tonight,” Peeta admits softly. “I’ve almost come over a lot of nights.”

I’m both thrown and suddenly hopeful, and the question comes out of my mouth before I can stop myself. “Why didn’t you?”

The worry on Peeta’s face draws deeper. “Because I might fall asleep. I still have nightmares too.”

As if the confusion on my face isn’t clear enough, I put my thoughts into words. “I don’t understand. Wouldn’t that help?”

“My nightmares are different than they used to be. Sometimes I still dream about the –“ he struggles for the right word, even though we both know what his nightmares used to be about “– about the things I did before. But sometimes, at night – the hijacking comes back.” Peeta turns the mug around in his hands. “What if I woke up from one of _those_ nightmares with you beside me and had a mutt moment? I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Oh.” The flicker of hope dies inside me a little. “Has it gotten any better?”

“I want it to.” Peeta’s eyes fix on mine. “I talk to Dr. Aurelius about it a lot. I’ve worked hard and I feel like I have it under control most of the time. But he says that the subconscious is harder. Maybe with time, he thinks, and new memories – I just, I don’t want to give you any reason to be afraid of me.”

He’s more afraid than I am, and it’s all my fault. “Peeta, I am so sorry that I ever let them split us up in that arena.”

“ _I_ was the one who said we should stay. You wanted us to leave the group.”

“I never should have let you out of my sight.”

“I can’t believe I let you out of mine.”

I laugh. I can’t help it.

“What?” Now it’s Peeta’s turn to be confused.

“We must be the world’s most terrible protectors. We can’t keep within 25 yards of each other to save each other’s lives and now that we’re always 25 yards apart, we still can’t help each other! How useless are we?”

“We can’t be that bad. We’re both still alive. And that’s something, more than something.”

“Somedays, I’m not so sure,” I say before taking a swig of my hot chocolate.

“As long as we’re still here, there’s hope to get better. You can’t give up on that, Katniss.”

“It was just a joke, Peeta.”

“Was it?” Peeta’s not laughing. “While I was in the Capitol, I spent a lot of time with my memories. Piecing out the bits that seemed off – looking for the edges of the lies. I re-watched a lot of footage of Games, the interviews, trying to recognize myself in any of it. Most of it still feels like it happened to someone else, but I have most of the facts now. But there are some things I still can’t figure out, that weren’t on camera. Things that only you would know.”

“Like what?”

Peeta stops and takes a breath as if to brace himself. I find myself going on alert in response. “In the Capitol, after you shot Coin. You tried to take a nightlock pill. Real or not real?”

He can’t ask me this. It’s not fair. I could make a break for the door. Peeta couldn’t catch me, but then where would I go? 

Peeta kneels on the floor in front of me, trying to meet my eyes. “Real or not real, Katniss?”

He’s the only one who can ask me this.

“Real.” My throat is so tight it’s barely a whisper. I can’t look Peeta in the eye.

“Because there’d be another Games?”

I shake my head.

“Because of Coin?”

I shake my head.

“Because of me?”

I shake my head again.

“Prim?”

My heart cracks open like a broken dam that can no longer hold back a flood. “I’m so sorry, Peeta. I’m so sorry.”

I can feel Peeta’s arms around my shaking shoulders. “I’m so sorry. I failed everyone. I couldn’t see a future that didn’t hurt. I - I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I’m sorry, Peeta. I’m so sorry.”

His hand holds my head against his shoulder. He holds me steady as he speaks softly and steadily into my ear. “You don’t need to apologize. You shouldn’t have had to bear all this. None of us should. But you shouldn’t have had to do it alone. I should have told you I knew, told someone, but I wasn’t sure --.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.”

Peeta hands raise my face to his own so I have to look him in the eye. “Never. You are never a burden to me, Katniss Everdeen, or to anyone else who loves you. You just have to let us help you. Let me help you, okay?”

I manage to nod before burying my head back into Peeta’s shoulder.

“Okay.” I hear Peeta say over my sobbing. “It’s going to be okay.” 

At some point, I feel Peeta’s arms fall away from my body and I instantly miss how they ground me, but I’m too tired to protest. It seems I won’t have to, as Peeta’s arms scoop under my back and legs to lift me up. Moments later, I am lying down on Peeta’s sofa, my head in his lap. I’m vaguely aware of his hand brushing softly against my hair before exhaustion takes me.

\----

When I wake up, the sun is up, and my head is still on Peeta’s lap. He’s breathing the soft, even breath of sleep above me. Last night must have exhausted him too.

I sit up slowly, trying not to wake him. _Last night._ My face flushes with shame as I think about my confession. Peeta looks so innocent and peaceful in his sleep. How can he ever look at me the same way again, now that he knows how broken I really am? My thoughts return to my plan about the woods. I could still go and then I wouldn’t drag him down with me. I’d have to do it soon – now. My game bag is still packed, I could just grab a few more things and slip out before he wakes up.

I pull back the blanket Peeta draped across my legs and stand, grateful for the silence afforded by my bare feet. I head toward the hall, using my skills from the woods to not make a sound.

“Katniss?”

I freeze.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to pee.” It’s the first lie I can think of, but as soon as it’s out of my mouth, I realize it’s true.

Peeta yawns. “Okay. What time is it?”

I scan his sitting room for a clock. It’s on the mantel, same as mine. “8:15.” So much for sneaking out.

“We slept in. Sae will probably be wondering where we are.” He rubs his hand across his hair, which catches the sunlight. “Shall we walk over together?” He gives me a smile. “If you don’t mind being seen in your pajamas with me, that is.”

“Let the neighbors talk,” I’m surprised to hear myself joke back. “It’s better than being seen leaving your house _alone_ in my pajamas.”

I don’t know if it’s the sunlight or if it’s because Peeta’s awake and not treating me like I’m broken, but things seem less dire than they did a few minutes ago.

Peeta smiles at me and stretches his neck before standing up and crossing to me, his gait slightly stiff. I imagine sleeping on the couch sitting up did him no favors. When he reaches me, his hand stretches out and touches my arm lightly. “How are you feeling this morning, really?”

“Okay,” I swallow, and I think it might be true, “but I really do have to pee.”

“Oh, sorry.” Peeta takes a step back. “It’s in the same place as yours. I’ll just go get dressed and then we can go over.”

I find my way to the bathroom as I hear Peeta clunk up the stairs. I think he must really be stiff from the sofa, when I remember his leg. Another wound Peeta carries because of me. I catch my face in the mirror while I wash my hands. Even with the sleep, my eyes are still tired and swollen. I turn the water to cold and let it run over my fingers, before pressing the chilled skin to my eyes. I quickly comb my fingers through my hair and decide that I’m going to look like a mess no matter what. I’m still too exhausted to care.

Peeta is waiting for me by the front door, but he doesn’t open it yet. With just a clean shirt and trousers, he looks remarkably pulled together, just another way I can’t ever seem to catch up.

“You know you have to tell Dr. Aurelius, right?”

I sigh. He’s probably right.

“And Haymitch.” My head jerks up at Peeta. “Anyone else I leave up to you. But this can’t just be our secret. I will be there for you anyway I can, but I know I can’t give you everything you need myself. Okay?”

“Just Dr. Aurelius?”

“And Haymitch.”

“And Haymitch. You won’t tell Sae or my mother or anything?” I don’t know if my mother would understand or be devastated by my state and I don’t want to find out.

“Just Dr. Aurelius and Haymitch.” Peeta puts his hand on the doorknob. “Do you want me to be there when you tell them?”

I nod. I don’t think I could do it alone.

“Okay.” Peeta nods back at me and opens the door, letting sunlight stream into the room.

We walk together to my house across the green, the sun is bright, and the dew is damp against the bottoms of my feet. Though he doesn’t touch me, I know Peeta’s by my side.


	11. June

I don’t think my admission of suicidal thoughts was a surprise to Dr. Aurelius. After confirming that I wasn’t _currently_ having those thoughts, he agreed that the best thing to do was to keep to our existing daily calls. But (and it was a stern “but”) if they ever did come back, I should call immediately to avoid what he called “a more formal monitoring system.” I also agreed to “full time company” from either Peeta or Haymitch on my bad days.

Haymitch took it harder. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m a shitty mentor, I had my head so far up my own ass I couldn’t see anyone else’s.”

He’s still at least slightly drunk as long as there’s liquor to be had, but he takes turns with Peeta sitting with me on the bad days without question. And he doesn’t make me talk about anything. He tells me little details about his geese that he describes with perfect individuality, even though he refuses to give them names other than “lunch” and “dinner.” He reads, sometimes to me and sometimes to himself. He eats the food Sae brings me and plays cards or chess mostly against himself. He lets me play if I want to or sleep if I want to. He’s better at hiding his worry than Peeta is.

I don’t ask him to, but Peeta starts sleeping over. He doesn’t share my bed like he used to, but stays nights in my mother’s old room down the hall instead. _Just in case_ , he says. Still, he’s there whenever I wake from a nightmare.

The first night I saw him come into my room on crutches without half his leg, I kept screaming, thinking it was still a part of the nightmare. It took extra long to calm me down that night and I not sure who was more embarrassed by it afterward. After that night, despite the heat, Peeta only wears long pants to bed.

After all this time, I had never seen him without his prosthetic before. When he explained that it was more comfortable and better for the remainder of his leg to sleep without it, I felt guilty about all those nights on the train when he didn’t remove it.

“Why didn’t you?” I ask.

“I didn’t want it to be a distraction.”

And there’s something in the tone of his voice that makes me not dare to ask what it would have been a distraction from. I also don’t question why he’s changed his practice now, whether he’s no longer worried about distractions or whether it’s another method to slow him down. So far, I haven’t seen any need for him to worry.

The afternoon we start writing about the Tributes from our first Games, though, I see what his “mutt moments” look like now.

We are working on our respective Cato pages, when I catch him stiffen out of the corner of my eye.

He grabs the pencil in his hand so tightly it snaps. He’s quivering with tension as he closes his eyes and tries to even out his breath. After a few rounds of shaky inhales, his breathing becomes deeper and more focused. I see him release his grip on the pencil and the crumpled paper in his other hand just moments before he slowly opens his eyes. When they meet my own, they are his, not the hijacked Peeta’s. It was a strangely quiet and self-contained battle. I look at the clock and see only a few minutes have passed.

Still, Peeta looks sad and exhausted.

He smooths out the mostly finished sketch of Cato and places it on the table. “I’ll have to do this one again, sorry.”

I wonder if my touch would make things better or worse, but I reach my hand over to his anyway. “It’s fine. I could use a break myself. Why don’t we call it a day?”

Peeta nods. “A break would be good.”

“We could go for a walk. I think the wild strawberries are almost ripe in the meadow. You could help me check.”

Peeta looks at me with surprise. “Are you sure?”

In all the walks we’ve taken over the past few months, we’ve never gone near the meadow or the woods. I’ve been there myself, of course. I feel I owe it to Sae to come up with fresh meat at least once a week and I feel stronger in the woods somehow. The woods are alive and beautiful in a way that my house and Twelve, still in the clean-up stages, isn’t yet. It feels good to hunt again, too. The act of drawing back my bow and finding my aim centers me in a way almost nothing else does – in the inhale before I release, it is just me and my target with no room for anxieties to creep in. The woods are still my safe space. I haven’t taken Peeta there and he hasn’t asked. He knows he’s loud in the woods, but even more so, he knows it was my place with Gale and before that, my father, and he’s too polite to trespass. It’s true that I still see reminders of Gale there, from our usual meeting spots to the snares I find left behind and immediately tear down. They’re the one thing that lessens my pleasure of being out in the wild. Peeta had said he needed to build new memories to replace the hijacked ones, and I think I coud use some new memories too. We both could use this.

I gently squeeze his hand. “I’m sure. Maybe if we find enough ripe ones, you can make me a pie.”

“Deal.” Peeta smiles back at me. It’s amazing to me how quickly he regains himself. When a dark mood hits me, I’m lost for at least a day. Yet, just minutes after an episode, Peeta can give me a genuine smile.

“How do you do it?” I ask, before I realize I said the words out loud.

“Do what?”

“Come back to yourself when you’ve gone. I could almost see it happen.”

Peeta looks slightly ashamed. “Dr. Aurelius gave me some techniques. When it comes over me, I’m back in some terrible memory, reliving it all over again. It feels like it’s going to take over and that I’ll be lost in that memory forever. So, I focus on one thing. I just need to breathe. And then I try to ground myself in the present moment. What do I smell? What do I taste? What do I feel? What do I hear? By the time I get to what I can see, the memory world has usually faded, and I know where I really am. “

“So it helps?”

“It helps.”

I tuck the knowledge away, for both Peeta and myself. “Let’s go find a basket for our berries. I think I have one in the kitchen.”

\----

There aren’t enough ripe strawberries for a pie yet, but Peeta takes our pickings and mixes them with sugar and serves them up with shortcakes and whipped cream. He also collects a few of the wild plants and transplants them next to Prim’s flowers alongside the house to see if we can grow our own.

Before, at least in the Seam, we weren’t allowed to have our own gardens. It was the Capitol’s way of keeping us dependent on the tesserae, their way of keeping us hungry. Aside from the Goat Man and the other vendors, only a few folks had livestock. Merchants mostly, like Peeta’s family with their pigs or and a few lucky miner families, like us, with Lady.

I suppose I could buy whatever livestock I want now, but I’ve no interest in keeping chickens or pigs, tending to something for eventual slaughter. But for the rest of returnees to Twelve, self-sufficiency is key. The new government has yet to make any formal decisions about what to do with us, aside from paying out a one-time survivor benefit to anyone from Twelve still alive, Victors excepted.

A month after Haymitch’s geese take up residence on the Victor’s green, they are joined by hogs, chickens, rabbits, and goats bought with pooled funds. The once quiet and austere Victor’s Village is filled with the sounds and smells of animals, along with clotheslines and vegetables in nearly anything that can hold dirt.

Buttercup has earned himself a bad name with the neighbors by attacking anything with feathers, but I know better than to try to do anything to tame him and the chickens usually only lose a feather or two. He makes up for it by keeping mice away from the animal feed.

I think of how Prim would have loved to see her home so alive with animals and it’s the first time I think of Prim and don’t become a grey heap. It feels like progress. One step forward, at least.

\----

The days are so much the same that I don’t bother to look at a calendar. Still, even if my mind doesn’t register the exact date, my body is still attuned to the seasons and the passage of time.

When the strawberries hit their peak ripeness, I know we are close to the end of June and my nightmares become more frequent. Haymitch and Peeta can feel it too, I know. Haymitch starts to drink more and begins to miss breakfasts. We feed and water the geese for him. Peeta and I find reasons to avoid working on the memory book and spend more time alone in our respective houses. The other houses on the green seem to become more solemn too. They’re not bad days, at least not bad enough that I require constant supervision, but we all know in our bones that the end of June is Reaping time.

I try to remind myself that there is no reaping this year. That that was the whole point of the war. But a lifetime of annual anxiety doesn’t just go away. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the day the Reapings would have normally occurred is when one of us breaks.

It’s around ten o’clock in the morning. Haymitch missed breakfast and Peeta went home after the meal to get another round of loaves in the oven. I’ve spent the morning organizing and reorganizing thing around the house. I’ve refolded all the quilts twice and glued handwritten labels to all my jars of dried herbs. I’m in the middle of restringing my bows when the yelling starts.

At first, I’m thrown by the sound. It’s wild and loud. Aside from myself at night, and occasionally Haymitch at his geese, no one in the Village is a yeller. I’m wondering if one of the couples across the way has gotten into a fight, when I realize the voice is Peeta’s.

I immediately go into survival mode. The bow is already in my hand, so I grab my quiver and run toward the front door. I’ve got an arrow notched by the time it shuts behind me. I immediately spot Peeta on his knees in the center of the green and my eyes scan for the enemy.

Peeta’s yelling something to the ground I don’t quite understand because I’m listening too hard for enemy motion.

I heard footsteps in the gravel to my right and I turn, aiming my arrow at the sound.

Haymitch throws up his hands in the air and yells at me. “Put that thing down! You wanna kill someone?”

I lower the bow in disbelief as I scan a full circle around myself. There’s no one on the green except Peeta, Haymitch and me. The few people not at work in the town are peering out their doorways and windows. I realize all three of us must look crazy.

“What happened?” Haymitch asks me.

“I – I don’t know. I just heard – “

“The yelling, yeah we all heard it. Heck, I was asleep, and I heard it. Well?” Haymitch stares at me like I’m an idiot. “Put the weapon on the ground and let’s go figure out what’s wrong with the boy.”

My body doesn’t want to release its protection, but I manage to force my knees to bend low enough to place my bow and quiver on the ground, my eyes still alert to Peeta – who’s now rocking and keening on the ground.

I haven’t seen him like this since the Capitol. I signal to Haymitch to stay back. I think of his reaction to the black wave, how it set him off and he tried to kill me, how he did kill Mitchell. I almost regret leaving my bow behind as I walk forward as quietly as I can to hear what he’s saying.

His voice is quaking with fear. “They can’t be here. They can’t. I can’t do it again. I can’t take it again.” His fists slam down against the dirt. I stop moving forward. I look back at Haymitch and he nods me forward.

Peeta’s breathing is harsh and ragged and beating like a drum in my ears. I wait for the next pound of his fists, but he holds them fast to the ground, the muscles in his arms trembling with the effort. I see his breath shift in his curled up back.

_He’s trying to ground himself._ _He’s fighting it._ I edge a little closer and lower myself on the balls of my feet. Low enough so he can hear me, but still able to jump away if I need to.

“Peeta? Peeta, can you hear me?”

His eyes flash up to mine, they are wild. “Katniss!” I’m coiled like a spring, but before I can move, he grabs my hands in his own and pulls me closer to him. I see Haymitch take a step forward and I shake my head at him. “Katniss, you’ve got to run. There are jackers in my house. Tracker jackers in the kitchen. They’ve sent them. They want to torture me. They want me to lose it again.”

I pull my hands back at the word jackers, losing my balance and landing on my rear. My heart starts to race. It isn’t possible, not here. Paylor couldn’t have any reason for wanting us dead, could she?

Having lost grip of me, Peeta’s hand have gone to the back his head, tearing at his hair. I look over and yell at Haymitch.

“There’s tracker jackers in his kitchen.”

“Holy Hell.” Haymitch runs a wide arc around Peeta and me and heads over Peeta’s house. If he was drunk at all before, he’s sober now.

I turn my attention back to Peeta. His eyes are shut again, and I can see he’s trying to steady himself. What was it that Dr. Aurelius told him to do?

I edge back onto my toes; I try to keep my voice as steady as possible. “Peeta, what do you smell?”

He stills, it seems like an eternity before he answers. “Grass. Damp soil.”

“What do you taste?”

His response is quicker this time. “Blood. I bit my lip.”

My hand hovers out over the ones still gripping his hair. “What do you hear?”

His fingers start to relax. “Katniss’s voice. Your voice. Asking me the questions.”

I gently remove his right hand from his hair and see small dots of blood left behind on the blond. “What do you feel?”

His eyes, red, but no longer wild, meet mine. “A hand on my hand.”

I keep my eyes locked with his. “What do you see?”

His left hand come down to join his right in my own. “Katniss. You.”

The tension in his body is gone. I sit back down on the grass. I rest my forehead against our still-joined hands. I’m exhausted. Is it always like this for him?

I hear the door to Peeta’s house swing shut and the crunch of gravel as Haymitch crosses from the house to the Green.

“Did you get them?” I ask, looking up.

“It was flies,” Haymitch throws something on the ground in front of us and plops down on his rear, his energy as sapped as ours. “It looks like that stupid cat of yours stopped a mouse from eating Peeta’s flour supply and forgot to clean up. Must have been a few days old. They were all over the thing.”

“Flies?” It doesn’t make sense.

“Houseflies, enough of them to make a good buzzing sound.”

We all look at the mouse, now free of flies and beginning to rot. I kick it away with my foot.

Haymitch shakes his head and gives a mirthless laugh. “The Capitol screwed all of us up real good, didn’t they? Three of Panem’s finest Victors losing it over a goddamn mouse. I can’t wait for this stupid day to be over.” Haymitch pushes himself back up to standing and dusts off the front of his trousers. “Well, I think this whole thing scared the liquor straight outta my blood. I’m gonna go get a drink. You’re welcome to join me if you want to.”

I shake my head as I turn Peeta’s hand over in mine. They’re deeply scratched and caked with blood and dirt. “No, thank you. I think we need to clean this up.”

\----

Peeta looks chagrined as I lead him to my house, the faces of the neighbors drawing back from their windows and doorframes.

“Don’t worry about it.” I tell him. “That was the best entertainment anyone here has had in months. They probably welcomed it.”

Peeta rubs his fingers over his wounded palms. “I don’t like being the source of it though.”

“I got used to always being watched a long time ago,” I say as I sit him down at the kitchen table. “Why should it change now?”

“It’s supposed to be different now.” He shakes his head “I don’t know why I let today affect me so much.”

I sit down in a chair next to him with a bowl of cool water and rag. I dip the rag in the water and begin cleaning the wounds on his right hand. As the blood washes away, I can see little halfmoon shapes where his nails cut into the skin. “It affected all of us. The mood’s been crummy in the whole Village for days.” I put the rag back into the bowl and squeeze it, watching red liquid drift out in coils from the fabric. “Can you start your other hand while I grab a few things?”

Thanks to my earlier organizing fit, I know exactly where to find the salve I made of burdock and slippery elm. I grab it and some clean bandages from my herb cabinet and stop by the kitchen window to remove some leaves from the plantain I keep floating in a jar of water there.

The rag is pink, but Peeta’s palms are clean when I return. “This will help with the cuts,” I say as I begin to rub the waxy substance into his palms. Peeta winces when my fingers hit a particularly deep cut. “Sorry,” I shrug, “still not a healer.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Peeta replies. “You’re always mending me up.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re practically my own personal medic. You cleaned me up in the cave and risked your life to get me medicine. You treated my handcuff sores in Tigris’ basement and did the tourniquet on the cornucopia.”

“That lost you your leg.”

“Only half of one,” Peeta jests.

“It’s not funny, Peeta.”

“I would have bled out if not for that tourniquet. I’d rather have one and half legs and be alive than have two and be dead. Anyone in their right mind would, so stop blaming yourself for that. Believe it or not, not everything is your fault.”

“I never said – “

“And it’s not just me either. You figured out how to stop the pain from the fog boils and took care of Finnick. You bandaged Beetee’s back with moss, stitched up Gale from the attack in the sewers. You’ve helped me in other ways too.” Peeta seems to catch himself at that. Before I have a chance to ask how, he carries on, nodding at the leaves soaking in the bowl. “You’re constantly picking up weeds on our walks for your collection. I bet you even made this stuff yourself. You’re more like your mother than you give yourself credit for.”

I think of my grey days in the chair by the hearth. I know exactly how much like my mother I am. I put the jar of salve down and spread the damp plantain leaves over his palm before wrapping them in place with bandages.

“You’re a healer, Katniss.”

“I’m a hunter.”

“You can be both. Nobody said you could only be one thing for your whole life.” Peeta flexes his hand under the first bandage as I move on to his other hand. “This feels better, thank you.”

I look away as I wrap his second hand. “It’s nothing.”

He holds up both hands and looks at them. “I won’t be able to knead dough with these for a while.”

“I wouldn’t. At least not until the wounds close up.”

Peeta sighs. “I wish I had a better way to ground myself, but sometimes the pain is what it takes to draw me back. Sometimes it’s all I have to turn to. You helped me this time though. You remembered.”

“We help each other. That’s what we do, right?” I wrap up the roll of unused bandages and screw the lid back on the salve jar.

“Right.” Peeta stares at his hands for a while, suddenly looking tired again, while I put away my supplies. “Could you help me with one more thing?”

“Of course. Whatever you need.”

“Could you deliver today’s loaves and tell everyone that I won’t be able to bring them another for a few days – so they don’t run out?”

Only Peeta.

I’ve mostly avoided the other returnees. I don’t want to see the blame in their eyes. And after the display this morning, I doubt they want anything to do with the crazy lady in their midst. If they didn’t think so before, I’ve surely proven now that I’m the mentally deranged person they called me on TV.

Peeta must see the indecision in my face. “I’d do it myself, but I don’t - I can’t. Not right now. Not after this morning,” Peeta says echoing my thoughts.

“Of course I’ll do it, Peeta. Don’t be silly,” I try to sound upbeatt. “You should rest. Take a nap or something.”

“Could I stay here for a bit? Just until you get back from the deliveries? I know there weren’t really any trackers jackers in my house, but – “

I know that fear. The memories lurking around every corner. “Stay as long as you like, Peeta. I’ll get the bread now and be back in two shakes.”

“One loaf per house, including Haymitch. Sae gets two.”

\----

Completing Peeta’s delivery run takes significantly more time than two shakes. Firstly, it takes multiple trips, since even with a basket, I can’t carry eleven loaves of bread at once. Secondly, as much as I didn’t want to talk to anyone, everyone, it seems, wants to talk to me.

I start with the house next to Peeta’s. I haven’t paid much attention to who’s living there now, but my plan is simple: shove the loaf into the first open hand I see at the door, let them know it’ll be at least three days before the next one, and move on as quickly as possible.

When the door opens, behind it is a sturdy-looking woman about my mother’s age. I recognize her vaguely from the Seam, but I can’t remember her name. But like everyone in Panem, she knows mine.

“Katniss! Well, I’m guess I’m not surprised seeing you here today after this morning,” she says brightly. “I hope Peeta’s all right. It’s awful what they did to that poor boy. To you both, it ain’t right.”

I’m surprised to hear myself included in that statement. “He’ll be fine,” I stammer out, “He just hurt his hands a little. But he won’t be able to make bread for a few days until they heal, so take your time with this one.” I hand over the loaf.

“Did he send you around to tell us that?”

I nod.

“You tell him to stop worrying so much about everyone else and take care of himself a little more.”

Miriam. I remember her name now, Miriam. I smile at her. “I’ll do that.” I turn to go.

“Did you fix up his hands?” Miriam asks, and I turn back.

“Yes, as best I could.”

“I’m sure they’ll heal up fine then. It’s good to have an Everdeen around here. We old mining hands are strong and good at fixing things, but we need folks like you to help fix up the people.” Miriam waits a for a reply, but I can’t think of anything to say to that. “Well, thank you for the bread.” She brings the loaf to her nose and takes a deep inhale and smiles. “I’ll do my best not to eat it all at once. Don’t be a stranger, now.”

It’s like this at every door. Faces glad to see mine. Concern for Peeta. Some shake my hand and thank me for what I did in the war. Others share that they have their bad moments and flashbacks too. One middle-aged man shows me a scar on his leg where my mother once stitched him back together. Thom tells me about his plans for a new town center. They all ask me to come around more often. By the time I make my last drop offs to Sae and Haymitch, I’m glad it’s to people that see me often enough that there’s no need for extra conversation.

By the time I get back to my own house, it’s been nearly two hours and I’m exhausted by all the interaction. I’m grateful to find Peeta asleep on the couch, even if Buttercup is curled up in the crook of his legs, the furry traitor.

Peeta stays until after dinner, when he returns to his normal routine of going home to shower and change before coming back over to sleep in my mother’s room. By the time he comes back, I’ve made a decision.

“Peeta,” I ask as he comes through the door, “would you stay with me in my room tonight?”

Uncertainty flashes across his face. “Katniss, you know why I don’t –”

“I know. And I’m not afraid of it anymore. And I don’t think you need to be either. I saw you today at your worst, and we got through it together didn’t we?”

Peeta bites his lip hesitantly. “I guess we did.”

“Besides, I need it today.” I look him directly in the eye. I had planned to say it for his benefit, so he wouldn’t have to ask, but I realize now it’s true. “I need you.”

“Okay.” Peeta nods, still worrying his lip a little. “Okay.”


	12. July

If Peeta had any bad moments that first night, I didn’t notice. All I know, is that curled up next to him, my sleep was restorative in a way I forgot it could be.

After that first night, I don’t ask, but Peeta makes the change permanent. We still don’t touch during the day, but at night, he allows me to rest my head on his shoulder in bed like we used to. I relish the familiarity of it.

Some things are different. Peeta takes a shower in my house every night and comes to bed on a pair of forearm crutches, the lack of a lower leg hidden by the length of his pajama pants. I recognize he’s chosen his side of the bed to keep his stump on the outside edge and that he always lays on his back to keep it as far away from me as possible.

Considering I screamed the first time I saw it; I don’t blame him. I want to tell him that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. That if anything, I want to feel his body, all of it, closer to mine. But each tentative step closer feels like a gift. I know he was hesitant to do even this much and I’m afraid that asking him for more would scare him away. I content myself with the warmth of his arm behind my head and falling asleep to the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

Following what would have been Reaping Day, things in the Village relax back to normal. And even for me, the reality that there will be no Hunger Games this year sets in. Peeta and I go back to working on our memory book. Sometimes I join him for his deliveries now, though not too often since I still find that much chit-chat exhausting. After a few weeks of normalcy, I start to become anxious again – this time for the anniversary of the day I shot an arrow into the dome of the area and Snow destroyed my District for it.

I’d feel it in my bones, but even without it, there’s no questioning the upcoming date. Our quiet little village of 50 or so is humming with outsiders and activity in preparation for President Paylor’s visit.

The powers that be have finally decided what to do with our wreckage and the President will be announcing it live from Twelve on the anniversary. The showmanship of it has the fingerprints of Plutarch Heavensbee all over it, and sure enough a capitol hovercraft appears the day before with Plutarch heading up the advance preparation team. Cressida, and Pollux are there too, or at least that’s what Peeta tells me, because in addition to the media team, a security team arrives to confine me to my quarters for the next 48 hours with no visitors, lest I still have a taste for assassinating presidents. I would have had to spend the two already awful days alone, but fortunately Doctor Aurelius has managed to secure a medical exemption for Peeta and Haymitch, in their role as my “medical observers.” 

Still, it’s the most blatant reminder yet that to the outside world I am a criminal, a dangerous nutcase. My neighbors and friends here had started to convince me I wasn’t, but the official statements feel truer when armed guards stand outside your front door and your body is so racked with anxiety that you can barely move.

On the day of the announcement, Peeta coaxes me out of bed with cinnamon buns. After breakfast, everyone in the Village is herded to train station for the event. Peeta, Haymitch and I settle down in the living room to watch the live feed. I’d rather just ignore the whole thing and go back to bed, but viewing is mandatory. _Mandatory_ has a bit more weight when the government is literally outside your door and anyway Peeta, at least, is interested.

“Don’t you either of you care what going to happen to our home?” he asks.

Haymitch just shrugs, he’s been drinking since before breakfast.

I do care. I care a lot, but I don’t want to have to hear the speeches about the terrible thing that happened to Twelve because of me first.

“You could go to the event, Peeta,” I offer. “You don’t both have to stay.”

“Plutarch wanted Haymitch and I to come,” Peeta confesses. “He said it’d be good for the people to see us. Increase Paylor’s favorability ratings or something.”

 _He did?_ Why didn’t Peeta say anything?

“Then why don’t you go? Haymitch and I will be fine.”

Haymitch is already snoring in his chair.

“I’ve had enough of being in front of cameras for someone else’s gain, thank you.” Peeta says with a hint of bitterness. “Besides, if you get a special exemption to spend time with Katniss Everdeen you don’t miss the opportunity.” Whatever bitterness was there is gone in a flash, replaced by a smile that almost puts me at ease until the new Panem anthem begins to play, signaling the start of the presentation.

My body stiffens immediately. Part of me had hoped that the pardon Plutarch had promised would come today. But the overwhelming silence on the topic, not to mention the guards outside, make it clear that isn’t happening. And maybe it never will. What if President Paylor just says terrible things about me to the whole country and then takes me back to the Capitol and puts me under lock and key? What if she condemns the whole district and makes everyone leave, except for poor mad Katniss Everdeen, who can die here alone? My mind starts to race through a thousand different possibilities, none of them good. I’m spiraling and I can’t seem to catch my breath, when I feel Peeta’s hand squeezing mine. I didn’t even see him slide it across the cushions.

“Come here.” Peeta pulls me into his side. I wrap my arms around his middle and bury my head into his shoulder. His right hand still holds my left snugly, while his left arm is steady around my back. I feel held in place, not in a confining way, but as if he’s trying to say that no one will drag me away on his watch.

Thom, a girl who was two classes above mine in school named Laurel, and another former miner in his 30s are seated on the train platform next to the temporary podium, as representatives of the District. From what I’ve gathered, Thom has taken a leadership role in the rebuild. I don’t know much about the other two, maybe Cressida just thought they were the most camera-ready. The remaining 40 or so individuals have been clustered toward the edge of the platform and artfully shot to make the crowd appear larger than it is.

The doors of the presidential car slide open and Plutarch exits to make the formal introduction. I think I spy Effie in the corner of the car before they slide shut again. If that’s the case, at least the presentation will stay on schedule.

“Please rise and join me in welcoming President Paylor to District Twelve.” Pultarch claps his hands together as he steps back from the podium. The crowd joins him, and they must be adding additional sound because no crowd of 40 is that loud.

Paylor exits from the train car and approaches the podium. The naturally commanding nature I first saw in District Eight is even more pronounced now, amplified by her tailored clothing.

“Citizens of the Free Panem, I speak to you today from District Twelve. One year ago, our previous government struck out at this small and unarmed community without provocation.”

I lift my head up from Peeta’s shoulder to hear better.

“President Snow ordered the destruction of his own people and of one of Panem’s primary sources of energy for no other reason than someone had refused to his play his terrible games. It was the tantrum of a petulant and unstable leader who had always used fear and intimidation to get his way. It was the desperate act of a desperate man. It served him no good and the people of District Twelve paid the price. Over 7,000 men, women, and children died that terrible day; and for those that survived, their homes and their livelihoods were destroyed.

But the citizens of Twelve have always been hardworking, resilient people. None have proven this more than the three people who share this stage with me today – miners without a mine, who returned to this place, doing the hard work to make it a home again. All across Panem, good people like these are doing the work of healing the wounds of tyranny and the wounds of war. Because District Twelve’s suffering was the greatest, its healing shall be the most transformative.

This is why I am pleased to announce today, that the government of the Free Panem will not only help heal District Twelve, but make it a place of healing. District Twelve will be the site of a new medical manufacturing facility, creating the medicines that will not just heal our people today, but far into the future. This healing cannot wait.

The train that brought me here today did not just bring a presidential cavalcade, it is loaded with supplies and equipment and workers to start rebuilding District Twelve’s future today. These people gathered before me have laid the groundwork for a glorious rebirth. If you were someone from Twelve scattered to the winds by Snow’s evil deeds, know that we are giving you a place to come home to. And if you are a citizen of Panem looking for a fresh start, District Twelve will be a place of good jobs, where you can build a life and raise a family.

Snow tried to cut us off from our sisters and brothers in Twelve, but we say as a country, we are family and will not be torn asunder. Let Panem’s healing begin in earnest today and let it begin with District Twelve. Thank you and _From the Ashes, Panem Rises_!”

The crowd, both real and amplified, applauds as Paylor steps back from the podium to shake hands with those around her. The cameras move on to reveal the equipment and building supplies from the Capitol being unloaded. The mandatory part of the viewing is over. Words scrolling on the bottom of the screen tell us to say tuned for President Paylor’s tour of the District and wreath laying at the District graves. But in this room, we’ve all seen enough.

Peeta turns off the feed with a remote and a deep sigh of relief exits my body.

“She’s good. I’ll give her that.” Haymitch opines from his seat. “Though a skeptical person might wonder where the heck the government has been for the last six months if they loved District Twelve so much. But there’s no skepticism here, right?”

I turn to him. “I thought you were asleep.”

“When the president’s on? Never.” Haymitch pushes himself up from the chair at looks at me. “You gonna survive the rest of the day, sweetheart?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Well. I’m gonna go home and check the locks. Looks like we’ll be having a lot of new neighbors soon. Maybe one of ‘em will be someone who can make good liquor,” he pauses for a moment, “or even shitty liquor.”

Haymitch gives us both a little salute and lets himself out the door. Paylor may not have said anything about me in her speech, at least not outright, but the guards are still there. I wonder what will happen when more people arrive – will I have to really be in lockdown?

“He’s right, you know.” Peeta interrupts my thoughts.

“What?”

“That we’re going to have a lot of new neighbors soon.”

“Well, if any of them _do_ make liquor, we’re going to spend a lot more time caring for geese.”

“Katniss, I’m serious. The President just invited the whole country to move in if they want a job. There’s going to be a lot more people, and soon. I don’t know how fast those machines can build houses, but right now, the Village is it.”

“You think I should check the locks, like Haymitch?” I raise an eyebrow.

“No. It’s just – Look, we’ve got every right to these houses. We earned them with everything the Capitol put us through, but –“ Peeta hesitates, but only for a moment, “– but I’d feel wrong banging around in that big house by myself when other people had to sleep in tents or something. I mean, Haymitch is never going to take in a roommate and I’m not even sure that place is all that inhabitable, but I’m here every night anyway…” Peeta looks at his knees.

“You want to be roommates?” I’m not quite sure what he’s even asking.

“You can say no if you want to.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I take up a lot of space in the kitchen and I--”

“Yes.”

I’ve never been more certain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to give Panem a new motto to replace “may the odds be ever in your favor.” The new motto refers, of course, to the legendary phoenix, a bird on fire, who rose from its own ashes. Incidentally, the phoenix was also a symbol of “undying Rome” and appeared on the coinage of the late Roman Empire. Given that Rome was also the city that gave us the phrase “panem et circenses,” let’s hope the new government of Panem is an apple that falls a little further from the tree.


	13. August

Despite my fears, the guards leave with the presidential convoy and I’m released from my lockdown. When Peeta goes back across the green to grab a few things, I cry in relief- that I’m not a prisoner, that Peeta will be here - sharing a home with me. It’s something I never though I wanted, but when he offered, I realized I’ve never wanted something more.

Peeta starts to move his things in the next day and it’s hardly too soon. Within a week, people are showing up to work on the new factory. At first, it’s contractors from the Capitol, but soon folks from across Panem start to appear. 

Though he’s officially living in my mother’s old room now, Peeta keeps his paintings in his old house and spends enough time there that no one questions that it’s his. He’s saving it for any District Twelve refugees who come back from Thirteen.

When they come back I realize how much it means to me to see those familiar faces - from the Seam, from school, the Hob. Their presence makes it feel like Twelve can come back again, that it isn’t all lost. Not everyone comes back, of course. My mother stays at her hospital in Four and Gale has his “fancy job” in Two. Those who can’t work or live in the temporary housing camps will stay away until more permanent housing is ready. And there are plenty of other folks who lost too much and need a fresh start in a new place instead. But I am surprised by some who choose to come.

\----

It’s impossible to miss Delly’s bright hair and smile when she walks into the Village. Peeta was, perhaps unfortunately, outside watering the primroses when she arrives, and her hug nearly knocks him flat to the ground. I come outside at the sound of the commotion. Her brother, Brae, looks so much bigger than I remember, but he’s probably thirteen by now and months of decent eating probably helped too.

“Katniss!” Delly squeaks when she sees me and squeezes me in her arms. “You look good. I was so worried about what happened. We all saw the trial and I just knew you didn’t mean it.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I just say the first thing that comes to mind. “You came back.”

“Of course we did. This is home, Katniss.” I don’t need to ask more to know why.

Peeta brings over the remnants of his things and Delly and Brae, along with four other families, move into his old home.

With Peeta moved in fully, Greasy Sae decides it’s time to take her leave.

“There’s other folks coming who need me more than you do now,” Sae tells me over the last dinner she’ll make for just me. “But you know where to find me and I still expect to get first refusal on any good game.” 

I know she’s just down the green, but I hug her tightly and try not cry. “Thank you, Sae, for keeping me alive, for helping me get better.”

Sae pushes my arms down and pulls herself straight in an attempt not to cry herself. “I just cooked some food. You did the bettering yourself. Like I said, just give it some time and you’d be as good as new. Which reminds me, I got you a little going away present.” Sae goes to her bag and pulls out a cast iron skillet.

I smile as I accept the gift, the weight now easy in my hands, “It’s rusted.”

“I know. Worst one we found. I was saving it till the end, but I figure I’ll let you do the work. It’ll remind you that we Seam folk are as tough as nails.” Sae laughs her hoarse laugh and I can’t help but join in.

\----

I don’t have to worry about not seeing Sae. She sets herself up as cook for the worker’s camp and Peeta now delivers all his bread to her directly, figuring she’ll know who needs it most. I’m helping Peeta with a delivery one morning, when I see another unexpected face.

“Dalton?”

“Katniss,” His smile flashes brightly under his closely cropped salt and pepper beard, “good to see you.”

Dalton takes his rations from Sae and I follow him to the tables they’ve set up for the work crews.

“I thought you would have gone back to Ten.”

“Nah,” the old rancher shakes his head, “I said goodbye to that place a long time ago. Once the war was over, I knew I’d have to get out of Thirteen, and this seemed like good as place as any. Besides I like being useful, and there’s plenty to be useful at here.”

A thought springs to mind, “I know something you can be useful with.”

That evening, when his work shift is over, Dalton and I stand in front of Haymitch’s house, surveying Peeta’s and I attempts at building a goose pen.

After poking around the corners, Dalton gives his report. “Well, you tried.” 

“The geese are always escaping. They’re totally wild and driving everyone nuts.”

“I can see why that’d be the case. The fence is about two feet too short to begin with – “

Haymitch must have heard voices, because suddenly he appears on the porch. “They’ll bite your fingers if you’re not careful, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“What idiot put you in charge of livestock, Haymitch?” Dalton says with a smile.

“That idiot,” Haymitch replies, pointing a thumb at me. I guess Effie did give my secret away.

“Well, you could use a better pen for them for sure.”

“Don’t bother. I’m going eat ‘em all before Christmas, the stupid things.”

Dalton looks at me and I mouth the words “He won’t.”

“I’ve got some good liquor and chess board if you’re interested,” Haymitch offers.

“Only if you’re ready for a whooping,” Dalton replies as he jogs up the stairs.

I realize once again that there’s a lot about Haymitch I don’t know. I think of him as surly and solitary like me, but I remember his friendships with all those other mentors. He and Dalton must have become friends in Thirteen. I did always wonder why the cattleman was called to that meeting about me. I guess this is why. It’s not the way I thought about Dalton being useful, but it’s a thousand times better.

Dalton comes around to Haymitch’s frequently after work, and true to my original request, helps the folks around the Village build proper housing for their goats, hens, and pigs. Having seen his work, Thom, who remains focused on rebuilding Twelve as a self-sufficient District, recruits him as official livestock advisor. Dalton, in turn, introduces Thom to a pair of twin brothers from District Eleven, Lee and River, who, in his words “know a thing or two about growing crops.” The tall, broad-shouldered twenty-year-olds remind me of Thresh. I get a chance to talk to them one afternoon, when Thom brings them over to discuss propagating wild strawberries. They knew Thresh and confirm to me what I’d read about in my letters, that Thresh’s grandmother had died, the stress of the war too much for her old body, but Rue’s mother and all her sisters are still alive. With the money I sent them, all the girls are able to go to school full time now. And for once in my life, I feel like I did something right, even if it was Peeta’s idea in the first place.

The twins both hug me and tell me that everyone in Eleven considers me one of their own and I’d be welcome there, if I ever wanted a change.

“I don’t think I’m allowed to go anywhere but here,” I explain, “but I’m grateful for the offer.”

They come over often to discuss what I know about the wild plants and what grows well in the woods. I even let them borrow my family’s plant book for a while. We become friendly.

I used to think I was incapable of making friends, aside from Gale, who was more like family. But somehow, without trying, I’ve been surrounded by them. First Madge, then Haymitch, Effie, Cinna, Finnick, Johanna, Sae, Dalton, Delly. I’m not only surrounded by them, but have come to enjoy and even want their company.

Somedays the noise and the interaction get to be too much, and I head off into the woods for hours alone. At first, it worried Peeta, but he’s come to recognize it’s something I need.

Peeta, my comforter and housemate, has also become my greatest friend.

As we work together and walk together, we share more of our ourselves. Peeta tells me about his family, I tell him more about mine. He shares how he learned to wrestle; he hears how I learned to hunt. I know now that his favorite season is winter, because it was the one time the bakery was cozy and not hot. I tell him I’ve always loved the hope that spring brings, though I don’t expand on why. When he asks me what I think I would have been doing now if we hadn’t been reaped, if everything hadn’t changed, I have no answer. As long as there was hunger and as long as there was the Games, I couldn’t think of a future, only survival.

Living together, we develop an ease with one another that rolls into an ease within ourselves. Peeta still has his episodes, like the day the machines drove the steel beams for the factory into place with great bangs that shook the whole Village, and I still have my dark moments. But our life develops a kind of normalcy that I never expected. We are allowed to build a relationship without the pressure of the Capitol, without competition, without fearing for our lives. I realized I loved him when I almost lost him to Snow, but now I know that I like him too.

Without the need to conform to anyone’s expectations, we seem to do everything backward - we share a bed, but we are not lovers. We share a house, chores, and meals, but aren’t married. We hold each other frequently, but only in moments of fear and sorrow.

It’s comfortable, but it leaves me wanting more.

I still remember the kisses we shared on the beach, the way his hand would slide into mine. I find myself admiring the freckles on the back of his hands as he draws another portrait for our memory book; wanting to brush his hair out of his eyes when it gets too long between cuts; holding back my desire to slide between his strong arms as he kneads bread. But anytime we touch outside of an episode, a nightmare, or a dark day, he stiffens and pulls away. I try to convince myself that the hijacking still makes him wary around himself and that he just needs more time, but I worry that though we’re better friends, he no longer cares for me in the way I wish he would.

One morning after breakfast, when Peeta is painting in the back of the house, I decide to start in on Sae’s skillet. I grab a rag and handful of salt and set myself to my task.

The exercise is easier this time around and the sound less grating, but a song still comes to my lips.

_If I were a blackbird, that could whistle and sing_

_I would follow the vessel that my true love sails in_

_And on the top riggings that I would build my nest_

_I would fly round the cabin and alight on his chest._

I’m about to start in on the first verse when I spy movement out of the corner of my eye. I assume it’s just Buttercup and ignore it, since once Peeta starts painting, he’s lost to the world for hours.

_If I were a scholar, I would handle my pen_

_I would write a love letter and I’d send it to him_

_I’d tell him my troubles, my grief, and my joy,_

_And I'll cherish the fine lies of my dear sailor boy._

I stop to inspect my work so far, when I’m startled by a voice.

“Don’t stop.” Peeta says from where he’s leaning on the doorframe, his hands covered in paint.

My cheeks flush red. “I didn’t think you’d be listening.”

“The birds stop to hear you, Katniss. Why wouldn't I? But I never thought I’d actually get to hear you up close. It’s not every day you get to realize a dream.”

My ears feel hot as my blush spreads across the rest of my face. “Well, I can’t sing with you staring at me like that.” I stammer.

“Then I’ll turn my back. It’s worth it.” Peeta smiles and then turns away as promised.

I’m still too embarrassed to sing, but my embarrassment is mixed with something else – hope. Wasn’t it my singing that he said made him fall in love with me the first time? Maybe it could work again.

But I’m too self-conscious, and I chew on the inside of my cheek instead.

After a minute or so off my silence, Peeta gives up and starts to walk away. His motion is enough to kick me into action. I begin to scrub furiously and return to the chorus.

_If I were a blackbird, that could whistle and sing_

_I would follow the vessel that my true love sails in_

_And on the top riggings that I would build my nest_

_I would fly round the cabin and alight on his chest._

I look out of the corner of my eye to see Peeta, his back still to me, resting his head and shoulder against the doorframe, in no hurry to move.

I sing the next verse with a smile on my face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the final stretch now and the story will wrap up by the end of the month. Thank you for coming along with me on this story. :) 
> 
> If I were a Blackbird: http://research.culturalequity.org/rc-b2/get-audio-detailed-recording.do?recordingId=12815  
> https://youtu.be/v-hyGo6wbaI


	14. November

Because we always sleep with the windows open, I wake up to a bite in the air that tells me fall is over and winter is here. I pull the covers up tighter under my chin and slide my hand over to Peeta’s side. Still warm. The temperature of the sheets is as accurate as any clock. Peeta is never there when I wake because even though he doesn’t need to, he still keeps baker’s hours. If his side is still warm that means I have at least an hour before he expects me downstairs.

I’ll put an extra quilt on the bed and lower the windows to just a crack for tomorrow, but right now I’m too cold to go back to sleep. I could get up and shut the window to make it more comfortable, but the thought of stepping on chilly wooden floorboards keeps me where I am. I roll over to Peeta’s side to soak up the remains of his body heat and smell the scent of his hair on the pillow.

I think about what I want to do today. We’re almost done with the memory book. Haymitch finally decided to observe less and contribute more and we finished the last of the tributes he mentored yesterday. I can only think of one more person to go, and I’m still not ready for that one yet.

I could go out to the woods, check on the wild turkeys and harvest some last greenery before it’s killed by the frost. I could use a restock. I’ve been going through my stores quicker than I ever expected.

We may be building a medical manufacturing facility, but no doctors will bother to come until it’s finished, or at least until something better than workforce housing is available. So when someone gets injured on the job, they come to me.

I’m not sure who said it first, maybe it was Sae or someone who knew Prim and my Mom, like Miriam, but word got around – go to Everdeen, the Everdeens are healers. It’s nothing major: cuts mostly, a broken toe from a dropped bag of tools, stitches over the eye from a mishandled beam, but it’s eased me into a role I never thought I could manage. I still hate to see anyone in pain, but I’ve sadly become accustomed to the sight of blood. _Still_ , I tell myself, _I’m a sad alternative to what they should have access to._ At least it’s only temporary.

If I go out now, it would be easy to get a few turkeys when they go out for breakfast. I wonder if I should ask Laurel along. I’ve taken her out a few times since she asked me to teach her to hunt and she’s getting better each time, but it’d still be new to her to bag something as big as turkey.

I put on my hunting gear and my father’s old coat and decide I’d rather be alone today – it’s been too long since I’ve seen a sunrise and I don’t want any distractions. I grab a few warm rolls cooling on the counter and a crab apple from the bowl as I pass Peeta in the kitchen.

“Going out hunting. Have breakfast without me!”

Seeing as Peeta’s hands are elbow-deep in the oven under a heavy tray, he can’t do anything more than say “See you later!” before I’m out the door.

\----

It’s the kind of quiet in the woods that only happens in the winter, when the cold makes every sound ring louder and travel farther.

It takes all my skill to move over the ground cover of frosted leaves silently. It’s good I didn’t bring Laurel, she’s not ready for this.

My breath ghosts out in front me and I button the coat closer around my neck. It’s colder than I thought. Suddenly all the times I had talked about, thought about, running away to the woods are at the forefront of my mind. Could I really have survived the winter? On my own? Alone? A chill runs down my spine and I shake the thoughts from my head.

I find myself a thicket of bushes that, even without leaves, is dense enough to provide a good blind and settle in to wait. I lean my bow against the thicket and reach into my pocket for my breakfast. My fingers brush against the crabapple first, too loud – I decide. I slide my hand deeper into the pocket, where the residual warmth of Peeta’s roll feels comforting against the cold.

The roll is slightly salty and a bit sour – one of Peeta’s experiments with the wild yeasts from District 4, if I had to guess. I have to smile as I think about Peeta trying to describe the concept to Effie, and what her version of that description must have been when she reached out to the Districts. Probably something only vaguely resembling the original, like the _whisper down the lane_ game we played as kids. Effie might think she’s sophisticated, but there’s so much she doesn’t have a clue about. Still, she must have done okay, because Peeta’s got a dozen little “pets” in jars on a shelf in the kitchen that he waters and feeds daily. I swear, they take more caring than Buttercup. Though I’d hardly refer to _that_ animal as a pet.

More like family, if I’m being honest.

I finish my first roll and reach into my other pocket for the second one, but I decide I better save it for later.

My knees are stiff and almost all the pink is gone from the sky when the flock appears.

I take down two birds in quick succession before the flock scatters in fear. I can see some of them waiting in nearby trees, I could get more if I wanted to, but I’m already cold and there’s no need.

\---

I stop by the work camp to give one of my turkeys to Sae and hang around to chat for a while before making it back home around 10 AM. Breakfast is long gone and Delly and Peeta are playing checkers.

“What’s for dinner?” Delly asks with a wink.

I raise the field-dressed bird in my left hand. “Turkey. It’s a good size one if you and Brae want to come over. If not, Sae’s serving turkey too, and she’s a better cook than I am.”

“Hard to turn down an invitation like that, huh, Delly?” Peeta asks her.

“I’ll have to weigh my options carefully.” Delly nods with mock seriousness.

“While you decide, I’m going up to take a shower.” I put the bird down on the kitchen table and toe off my muddy boots. “Peeta, put on the big pot to boil and I’ll pluck it when I’m done.”

I’m about to jog up the stairs, when Peeta’s voice stops me.

“Katniss, I almost forgot. You need to call Effie.”

I roll my eyes, _Effie can wait._

“She said to do it as soon as you got back.”

I sigh. “What is it about?” I ask, with an edge of irritation to my voice.

“She wouldn’t tell me,” Peeta shrugs, “But she said, and I quote ‘It’s very very important that Katniss call me back immediately.’”

I sigh and pull off my jacket before heading to the phone to dial Effie’s number.

“Effie? It’s Katniss.”

“Katniss!”

“Peeta said you had something important to tell me?” I smell my underarms; I stink and really need a shower. If this is about a new fashion trend in the Capitol, I’m hanging up now and apologizing later.

“I’m so glad you called. I have news, big, big news. We’re planning an immense tribute to honor the one-year anniversary of the ending of the war – Plutarch’s going all out naturally – and the President just informed me that as part of the presentations she’s going to finally give you an official pardon. We’ve all been advocating for you ever since the trial, of course, but to do it on the anniversary is _just_ perfect. Isn’t it perfect, Katniss? Just think, on Friday, you’ll be free to go wherever you want. Now the question is, do you want to come to the Capitol for the ceremony or accept from District Twelve – Plutarch thinks seeing you shake hands with the President is more compelling, but I say seeing you in rising from the ashes in Twelve has more drama.”

“It’s perfect, Effie.”

“Yes, but it’s only two days away. If you’re coming here, we’ll have to get you on a train immediately and there are outfits to think of - if only Cinna was still here, I’m sure he’d have some fabulous for you. Either way I’d send the old team to prep you. You haven’t cut your hair, have you?”

“No, Effie. I haven’t cut my hair.” I can hear the flatness in my voice, but it doesn’t seem to bother Effie.

“Good. Flavius likes to know what he’s working with. So, which is it, Twelve or the Capitol – the President said you get to choose.”

“Can I call you back? I need to think about it – how many days did you say?”

“Of course, it’s quite a decision. But it _is_ two only days away. Talk to Peeta and Haymitch and let me know by noon, okay? Lots of planning to do for your big, big day!”

“By noon. Okay. Bye Effie.” I hang up the phone before I hear her farewell.

I drop my jacket on the floor and sit myself on the stairs, dazed. I should be happy. I should be overjoyed. I’ll no longer be a criminal and I’ll finally be free, but all I can think of is that if the war ended two days from now, that means that tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of Prim’s death.

“Katniss?” Peeta enters the hallway tentatively.

“Huh?” I look up. “Where’s Delly?”

“I sent her home when you didn’t respond the first three times I called your name.” Peeta comes closer and rests a hand on the stair rail. “What did Effie say?”

“The President is going to pardon me on Friday, on the one-year anniversary of the end of the war.”

“That’s good, right?”

“But if Friday is the anniversary, then that means that tomorrow –” my voice catches in my throat.

Peeta finishes the sentence I can’t, “that tomorrow is the anniversary of the bombing.” Peeta sits down next to me on the stairs.

“She’s been gone a year, Peeta. A year and I almost forgot.”

“You know time is funny now. You never even look at a calendar, I barely do either. It’s not like either of us was conscious for the actual ceasefire.”

“But she’s my _sister_. I should have known, felt it in my bones, planned something.”

“It’s not too late. We can still do something. Whatever you want.”

I look into Peeta’s eyes. He means it, he’d give me anything I ask for right now. But I can only think of one thing. “We do Prim’s pages.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?” He knows that every time he’s brought it up, I’ve turned him down. He stopped suggesting her name months ago.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be, but I owe it to her.” I hold onto Peeta’s gaze with my watery eyes. “Help me do it? Do her justice?”

“Of course.” Peeta puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. “Anything.”

We sit there until I hear the sounds of splattering water on the stove. “The pot’s boiling.” I sniff and rub the heel of my hand across my nose.

Peeta pulls his arm away and stands up. “I’ve got it. You go clean up. I’ll take care of the bird.”

“Do you even know how to pluck a turkey?”

“I’ll manage. Go take your shower. Take all the time you need.”

I take a bath instead.

I lie in the warm water, my head resting against the cold porcelain. Even though I know I should be more buoyant in the water, my whole body feels like lead. I can’t see it, but I feel sadness oozing out of every pore. It drips out of me slowly, making the water colder and deeper with each drop. The water is cold enough now that goose pimples rise up on my arms and the top of my knees. I stare at the ceiling, no idea how much time has passed. Is it tomorrow already?

“Katniss?” Peeta pokes his head in the door, making a point to not look directly at the tub. “I hadn’t heard anything in a while, and I wanted to check…”

I look for patterns in the knots in the floorboards above my head.

Peeta is by the tub in an instant and guides me out of it. I don’t know how he manages to move my limbs, they’re so very heavy. I’m wrapped in a towel and carried to the bedroom. Changed into my pajamas. An extra quilt is put on the bed as I’m tucked in. It’s still the bright light of midday when my eyes close and sleep takes me. The last thing I remember is the sound of the phone ringing downstairs.

\----

I have no dreams, no nightmares, just darkness, emptiness. Even in the nothingness, I’m aware of being held, grounded. When I wake up, Peeta, as usual, is gone. I slide my hand to the side of his bed and find it cold. I look to window and see morning light. I wonder how long I slept.

I’m hit with an overwhelming need to pee. I drag myself out of bed and down the hall to the bathroom. While I wash my hands, my stomach grumbles and I realize how hungry I am. I braid my hair as I wander toward the kitchen, hoping Sae has made something good, before I remember that Sae stopped making my meals months ago and I usually make breakfast now. Maybe I can just eat bread this morning.

Haymitch is at the table sipping coffee while Peeta sits in his usual sit, rotating a mug of tea in his hands. I sit down between them and reach for a cheese bun from the basket on the center of the table with an odd sense of déjà vu. I’m almost expecting day-old hardboiled eggs, when Peeta slides a plate full of scrambled eggs with peppers and bacon in front of me.

I look up at him, questioningly.

“I can cook eggs too.” Peeta says.

I’m on my third bite, when I remember yesterday’s phone call. My head jerks up, “Effie. When is everyone coming –”

“We called Effie _and_ Plutarch yesterday,” Haymitch answers. “No one’s coming and you aren’t going anywhere.”

I put my fork down on the table in preparation of my upcoming protest.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Haymitch says, cutting me off before I even get started, “You’re still getting your pardon. I just convinced everyone that a statement would be better than a presentation, keep the focus on the President and all.” 

“Thank you, Haymitch.”

“Peeta told me about your plan for today. If you’re okay with it, I’ll like to stay and help too. I didn’t know her very long, but I knew her enough.”

I smile and tears spring to my eyes. These men, my boys, are too good to me. “I’d like that.”

We spend the day sharing stories about Prim. Buttercup, drawn to the room by mention of her name, joins our memorial. Most things make me cry. Others make me laugh. I fill pages and when I cry too hard to write, Haymitch writes for me. Peeta draws Prim with Buttercup in her arms, looking determined, kind, and strong. We go outside to pluck a late flower from the side yard and then press it between the pages, sealing it with our tears and promises to live well to make her death, all their deaths, count. Peeta stacks the pages neatly together and places them in their box, I tie it shut with a ribbon.

Finally, we are done.

Peeta and Haymitch must have talked to Sae too, because she stops by in the early evening, leaving a pot filled with stew for our supper. After supper, Haymitch excuses himself to feed his geese and once again, Peeta and I am alone. The sun has just set, but I am drained and ready for bed.

I leave Peeta to clean up and head upstairs and put myself to bed. I’m curled up on my side, not yet asleep, when I feel the mattress bend under Peeta’s weight and hear the now-familiar shifting sounds as he removes his artificial leg. I hear him set it on the floor and I keep my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, as he pauses, sitting for a moment. His fingers brush across my hair gently, then he slides under the covers. Then Peeta does something he’s never done before, at least not in this bed, wrapping his arm around my middle and curling up behind me. I can feel the warmth of his body and the place where his leg ends below his knee as we nestle together as snugly as two spoons in a drawer.


	15. November

The President’s address is scheduled for 2 PM. Today there are no guards and I could be anywhere I want to be, but this is the first mandatory programming in my life I want to see and Peeta and Haymitch are right here with me.

There are a number of presentations and speeches before the President appears. In the midst of words about healing and moving forward, President Paylor announces my official pardon and the rest of her words are noise in my ears. Haymitch toasts me with a bottle, while Peeta holds my hand.

“You deserve it, Katniss,” Peeta tells me sincerely. “Of all of us, you deserve to be free.”

The speeches end at 3 and the celebrations begin. In the Village and the work camp, the banging of pans and cheers gradually shifts to laughter and music. When the sun goes down, light from bonfires dot the sky. Haymitch and Peeta went out during the first round of celebrations, but I decide to stay in and re-read some of the memory book. That’s where Peeta finds me when he returns.

“They’re about to start some dancing down at Thom’s,” Peeta informs me.

I look down at the pages in my hand. “I don’t think I feel like dancing.”

Peeta gently pushes the papers down to the tabletop. “You promised them to live well, Katniss. Today is the first day in your whole life that you’re are truly free – you’re not answerable to the Capitol, there’s no Games, no more fear. You have a future ahead of you – you should celebrate.” He flashes me a smile, his tone becoming lighter. “Besides, Delly said she’d never talk to me again if I didn’t get you to come.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” I laugh in defeat and hold my hand out to Peeta. He pulls me out of the chair, and we walk down the gravel path to the bonfire blazing at the end of the Village green.

Delly is there, so is Haymitch. Dalton, Thom, Brae, Laurel, Lee, River, and a few dozen other neighbors from the Village have gathered as well. They’ve pulled together a band of sorts – there’s an older man on a fiddle, Lee plays a pair of spoons, and River has a banjo made from scrap wood and an old biscuit tin. They end their current song and dive into _Soldier’s Joy_. The dancers form two lines and Delly pulls Peeta across from her. Brae tries to take my hand, but I wave him off and sit next to Haymitch and Dalton instead. They’re laughing about something that happened near the end of the presentations that morning, something I definitely didn’t catch since it came after my pardoning. I clap along to the music and watch the dancers instead.

Peeta could manage the slow circles of the formal Capitol dances, but he’s clearly out of his element here. I have to laugh at his attempts to keep up with Delly. I’m not sure if he’s hindered by his leg, or if his just wasn’t a home for dancing. The latter thought threatens to make me sad, when Haymitch notices my presence.

“Come on, sweetheart. I got you out of a television appearance, you owe me a dance.” Haymitch offers out his hand.

“Fair enough.” I stand and take his hand as he draws me into the lines. Haymitch is slightly drunk at best, but even so he’s a better dancer than I would have imagined him to be. It seems like there are still surprises in store for me. I think about what Peeta said about me being free. I look beside Haymitch, where Peeta’s dancing with gusto, if not grace, and for the first time, I can see a future. It’s not alone out in the woods, but here, with my people – my family.

Haymitch bows out after the first dance and I move between partners as the song shifts to a reel. We dance until we’re too tired to dance, then sing until we’re ready to dance again. The night grows deeper. When the twins and the folks from Twelve run out songs they jointly know, they start over at the beginning. When the dances begin repeating, Peeta steps out of the circle of revelers and I follow him out into the darkness.

“Heading home so soon?” I ask.

“I’ve got to get some sleep,” Peeta replies. “You know, baker’s hours.”

“I’m sure no one would notice if the bread was late tomorrow. I doubt anyone here is waking up before noon.”

“Well, old habits die hard.” The light from the bonfire flickers across his face, catching his smile.

“I’ll walk you home.”

“I can see the house from here, Katniss. I think I’ll make it back all right. You stay and enjoy.”

“You never know when you’ll get attacked by a loose goose.” I say with mock sincerity.

“That is true,” Peeta responds in same tone, “I had forgotten about the dangers of untended geese. Will you come and protect me?”

“That’s what we do, isn’t it? Protect each other?”

Peeta’s smile loses the jesting smirk and becomes sincere. “It is.” The bright smile returns as he holds out his hand to mind. “Together?”

I take his hand, interlacing my fingers with his. “Together.”

As we move away from the heat of the bonfire, I can feel the chill in the air and draw closer to Peeta’s warmth beside me. Unlike our walks in the spring and summer, he doesn’t pull away. I’m glad the night is dark, so Peeta can’t see the flush in my cheeks.

It only takes a minute or two to walk down the green to our house. I must still be high on adrenaline from the celebration and the dancing, because before we reach the first step to the house, I make a decision and stop.

Peeta doesn’t notice and gets out the length of my arm before I hold fast and stop him. He turns at the tug on his arm. “Did you want to go back –”

His question is cut off as I pull him closer to me, close my eyes, and plan a kiss on his mouth. His lips are familiar, we’ve kissed so many times before, but this is different. I feel a hint of hesitation from Peeta and I pull back, my heart in throat. “Is, is this okay?”

Peeta’s eyes are wide. “You kissed me.” His cheeks lift in a befuddled smile.

“Yeah, I did.” I’m smiling too.

“’Bout time too!” Haymitch hollers from his stairs next door.

“Shut up, Haymitch!” I yell, not losing eye contact with Peeta. “Did you follow us or something?”

“Nope. Just coming back for a refill.” I see him shake an empty bottle out of the corner of my eye as he steps through his door.

I turn my gaze fully back to Peeta.

“Why’d you do it?” Peeta asks. “Kiss me?”

“Because I wanted to. For the first time, I saw a future in front of me, and I wanted it to be with you.” Fear grabs a hold of me and I look down for a moment at our still intertwined hands. “If you don’t -- so much has changed, so if you just want to be friends, I understand.”

“I’ve never wanted to be just friends. I still love you, Katniss,” Peeta’s fingers lift my chin. “I always have.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?. I thought maybe, after the hijacking, you didn’t feel that way anymore. After it showed you what I was really like.”

“The Capitol didn’t show me what you were really like, you did. When you volunteered for your sister. In two arenas. In the Capitol sewers, under the floorboards of Tigris’s shop, these past months together. I might have been infatuated with the girl who sang the Valley Song, but I fell in love with you, Katniss. Brave, stubborn you, who feels way more than you want anyone to know and still doesn’t realize the effect she has on people.” Peeta’s thumb drift across my jawline. “I didn’t say anything because I wanted it to be your choice, free from any kind of pressure– no cameras, no Capitol, no Games, no pushing from me. You’ve had so few opportunities for choice in your life, this one had to be yours.”

“So, it’s okay I kissed you?” I can still hear a hint of doubt in my voice.

Peeta frames my face with his hands. “It’s more than okay.” Peeta pulls me into another kiss, and this time there is no hesitation from either of us, as our eyes close and mouths open to take in more each other.

“Woooo!” Haymitch hollers as he stumbles his way back down his steps, full flask in one hand and a bottle in the other.

Peeta and I pull away laughing. “Shut up, Haymitch!” Peeta yells without malice, a grin plastered on his face.

“So, what do we do now?” I ask.

Peeta looks at the building in front of us. “We go home.”

Peeta takes my hand and leads me up the stairs of our house, our home. We don’t say much as we change into our pajamas and Peeta sits down to remove his leg. I don’t quite know what to do with myself. How do I just crawl under the covers like normal with someone who I’ve been sharing a bed with for months, but only just confessed my feelings for?

Peeta sets his leg on the floor and looks up at me, catching me staring at the bed. “Don't worry that I have expectations, just because you kissed me. We have all the time in the world, Katniss. For whatever we do, or don’t, want to do.”

I sit down on the bed and slide under the covers as Peeta turns out the light. He lays on his back as he usually does, and I rest my head on his shoulder allowing my body to tuck in a little closer to his.

“It just feels like everything’s changed,” I whisper.

Peeta pulls his arm tighter around my shoulders and kisses me on the top of the head. “Nothing’s changed since this morning. It’s still you and me, here in Twelve. It’s still us, just better.”

I tilt my chin up and kiss him on the cheek, then rest my ear against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart mingle with the sounds of celebration coming in through the crack in the window.

 _Better._ I think back to those first dark days when Sae kept me alive with soup and salt and cast iron: _just give it some time and it’ll get better._

I didn’t know how right she was, and just how _good_ better could be.

The end. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soldier Joy’s - https://www.loc.gov/item/afcreed000175/  
> The timeline for this story owes a great deal to these folks on Tumblr: https://alanfromrochester.tumblr.com/post/131924523979/mockingjay-timeline 
> 
> A heartful thank you to everyone who read and kudo'd and commented and gave me such a lovely welcome to the Hunger Games fandom. I've very much enjoyed creating and sharing this story with you. 
> 
> I'm thinking about doing a companion piece to this one from Peeta's POV that covers a slightly different timeline, but if you have any unanswered questions or thoughts - let me know!


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